For this episode we’re taking a look at the Manifesta festival and this sixteenth edition of Europe’s nomadic biennial of contemporary art. Running from 21 June to 4 October 2026, it unfolds across the entire Ruhr region, taking in the major industrial centres of Bochum, Duisburg, Essen and Gelsenkirchen.

Presented by John Beauchamp and Katarzyna Jagodzińska. In the podcast we hear from Founding Director of Manifesta Hedwig Fijen, who steps down from her post in October 2026, and veteran Polish curator, historian and art critic Anda Rottenberg.

Under the title “This is not a church,” more than one hundred participating artists and collectives have transformed twelve church buildings into spaces for exhibitions, performances, workshops and community life. Only two remain consecrated, with one turned into a lay chapel. The others are closed, unused, in the process of deconsecration or have already been repurposed.

Can Manifesta arts festival save Ruhr churches?

Heritage is central to Manifesta as these churches hold more than architectural value. They carry memories of migration, industrial labour, faith and the rebuilding of communities after war. As their original functions change, the question becomes how to preserve those connections without freezing the buildings in time.

Manifesta explores this through art and participation, inviting people to imagine new uses while engaging with the past. Here, heritage becomes a shared resource: a foundation for belonging, dialogue and collective life. “This is not a church” asks what can change - and what must be remembered - as these places enter their next chapter.

In the podcast we also hear two sonic installations from Manifesta:

Variation on Godspeed in 4/4 Time by William Engelen (Marienkirche, Essen)
Ouranophobia 47051 by Abbas Zahedi (Kulturkirche Liebfrauen, Duisburg)

The popularity of the Schindler Factory – a branch of the Museum of Kraków – which opened 15 years ago, has since led to the creation of a new museum at the nearby KL Plaszow concentration camp.

The Schindler Factory is a part of the Museum of Kraków, and displays a narrative of Kraków life during World War II under Nazi German occupation.

The new KL Plaszow museum, set to open its doors to the public in 2026/2027, is to bolster the narrative proposed by the Schindler Factory, whose popularity among visitors has been cemented thanks to the 1993 Hollywood film “Schindler’s List” directed by Steven Spielberg. Even nowadays, many visitors who come to the Schindler Factory do so on account of the motion picture.

How can the two museums complement each other, and how is it that the KL Plaszow Holocaust memorial site went for so long without being properly commemorated?

Katarzyna Jagodzińska meets with Monika Bednarek, director of the KL Plaszow Museum, as well as Bartosz Heksel, manager of the Schindler Factory branch of the Museum of Kraków.

For this episode of Heritage Hour we are in Nowa Huta, an industrial city which was built as a workers’ neighbourhood in the socialist-realist style in the late 1940s, acting as a proletarian counterweight to the seemingly snobbish and intellectual city of Kraków.

Over seven decades later, and Nowa Huta’s sprawling steelworks have all but disappeared, the district is one of the greenest in Kraków, and new challenges await. While the city is on the Polish historical monuments register (designated as a pomnik historii), it now has a chance to promote itself further by applying to UNESCO. But is such a heritage label what Nowa Huta really wants, or needs?

John Beauchamp and Katarzyna Jagodzińska meet with two experts from Nowa Huta to discuss its very phenomenon. Katarzyna Kobylarczyk, a local journalist, author and social archivist, as well as Jarosław Klaś, Director of the Norwid Cultural Centre in Nowa Huta.