For this episode of Holistic Heritage, we meet the team at the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub for Central and Eastern Europe and take a look back at the first few years of the Kraków Hub and its activities.

Hosted by John Beauchamp and Dr Katarzyna Jagodzińska, Head of the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków. Also featured in the episode are Deputy Head of the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków, Dr Joanna Sanetra-Szeliga, and Communications Manager Łukasz Pieróg.

The Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków was established in July 2022, hitting the ground running to increase awareness of heritage issues across the region.

A major project undertaken by the Heritage Hub in Kraków was the mapping of the NGO heritage sector in the CEE region. We also set up the Kraków Heritage Forum, a series of meetings for practitioners to discuss local matters, such as culinary traditions and the Fortress Kraków network of forts surrounding the city.

We also discuss how our podcasts are a great tool to communicate our activities and the regional heritage ecosystem to a global audience.

In the episode, you can hear excerpts of soundscapes recorded while travelling across the region:

1. Organ interlude at St. Mary’s Basilica in Kraków, home of the Wit Stwosz alterpiece which won a European Heritage Award / Europa Nostra Award in 2023.
2. Walking the Via Transilvanica hiking trail near Piatra Fântânele in Romania, summer 2024.
3. A crackling fire opens the Łemkowska Watra festival in southern Poland in July 2024.
4. Urban soundscape of the city of Lviv, western Ukraine, April 2024.
5. Mining machinery in operation at the Queen Luiza Adit mine in Zabrze, Poland, early 2025.
6. Onboard a vaporetto in the Italian city of Venice on the occasion of the European Cultural Heritage Summit in September 2023.
7. The snap and crackle of wicker weaving at the Serfenta Association in Cieszyn, Poland, April 2025.
8. Mechanical looms being operated at the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź, June 2025.
9. A thunderstorm in the Beskid highland village of Nowica, summer 2024.
10. The Polish-Ukrainian folk band “Hraybery” play in the south-eastern border town of Przemyśl, summer 2024.

In this edition of Holistic Heritage, we speak to three heritage practitioners in Poland’s southern city of Kraków and what makes this city so special in terms of creating and running cultural heritage projects.

Join hosts John Beauchamp and Dr Katarzyna Jagodzińska, Head of the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków, as they speak to Katarzyna Sosenko, an art historian and Chair of the Sosenko Family Collection Foundation, Artur Wabik, mural artist, curator and Chair of the Comic Museum Foundation in Kraków, and Krzysztof Żwirski, a long-term collaborator with the Kraków Municipality and mastermind behind numerous projects promoting cultural heritage in the city and beyond.

What makes Kraków such a special city to create and undertake cultural heritage projects? How does the city compare in terms of grass-roots movements and bottom-up initiatives? How does Kraków fare in comparison to other urban centres in the region?

Find out more in the podcast – and also remember to download our latest report on the heritage-based third sector in the CEE region!

Over the past couple of years, the research team at the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków has been busy on creating a report on the non-governmental heritage sector in Central and Eastern Europe.

“Mapping of the Central and Eastern European Non-Governmental Heritage Sector: Report” was published in June 2025 and penned by researchers at the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków in collaboration with the Centrum Cyfrowe Foundation in Warsaw.

The report is the first of its kind, giving a comprehensive overview of the non-governmental heritage sector across ten countries in the region. The document – containing over 200 pages – highlights the situation of the sector as well as the challenges it faces.

As many as 35,000 heritage NGOs are operational across the CEE region, the report finds, although working conditions leave a lot to be desired: the research reveals that problems regarding cashflow, operational stability and burnout are the three hardest challenges the sector faces.

The report shows findings from ten countries: Belarus, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine.

Three of the report’s authors: Dr Katarzyna Jagodzińska (Head of the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków), Dr Joanna Sanetra-Szeliga (Deputy Head of the Europa Nostra Heritage Hub in Kraków), and Maja Drabczyk (Chair of the Centrum Cyfrowe Foundation in Warsaw), join podcast host John Beauchamp to discuss the report’s findings.

You can download a copy of the report from the Kraków Heritage Hub’s website by going here.

This podcast was produced in the frame of and as an outcome of the European Heritage Hub pilot project co-funded by the European Union.