The culture of sound in the "Grodzka gate – NN theatre" centre

This essey presents the experience and reflection of a cultural insitution on the values of soundscape and methods of making contemporary people more sensitive to it. The aim of the text is to share this experience with scholars and scientists in order to work together on the quality of sonic environment more effectively. The author criticizes the most popular and simplest methods of measuring noise by electronic instruments and reducing it by physical separation of citizens from its sources because they do not reduce noise emission and introduce additional barriers into urban landscape. From the prespective of the Forum for Space Culture (one of the Centre's activities) better methods of fighting annoying souds consist in better city planning and valuating soundscape in relation to its significance in local context. The second part of the essey presents the development of sensitivity to soundscape in the Centre. The first source of interest in this medium was theatre as the kind art in which sound plays a unique role and requires thorough treatment. The second source was the Grodzka Gate whose history lead the founders of the Centre to exploring the local past by recording Oral History. The combination of these two inspirations lead to a series of projects and public events such: publishment of a CD with Oral History about Lublin Jews, sonic environments of exhibitions, hearings of radio reportages and "myteries" – open space events offering participants to experience sounds connected with local cultural heritage. A unique project broadening sensitivity to soundscape is a project The Invisible Map of Wrocław (printed in Polish, German and English) presented by its author Maciej Buczyński during the meeting of the Forum for Space Culture at the conference. It is a guide to Wrocław, created by people who have never seen the city in which they live. The idea behind this project was to visit and document places which have a special meaning to blind people in order to get closer to them and learn how they perceive the world. The resulting catalogue of 31 places portrayed through photography, description and sounds