I am pleased to inform you that I have been awarded the Kraków UNESCO City of Literature Award for an artistic fairy tale about Dolibuk – a dwarf from Lanckorona.
The organizer of the Kraków UNESCO City of Literature Award competition is the Municipality of Kraków (Kraków, PL), and the implementing body is KBF – the operator of the Kraków UNESCO City of Literature programme.
The character Dolibuk – a gnome from Lanckorona – was created out of the need to tell a new story about the beauty of a place and love for a small homeland, one that connects generations and encourages both children and adults to read and tell fairy tales. Dolibuk highlights important life values such as friendship, kindness, respect for other people and other living beings, developing passions, love of art, care for nature and the environment, and the need for peace and dialogue.
The inspiration for Dolibuk’s adventures was the work of Kazimierz Wiśniak – an outstanding painter, illustrator, and theatre set designer, the “Angel of Lanckorona” and the “King of the Lanckorona Dwarfs,” and a co-founder of the Krakow’s Piwnica pod Baranami cabaret. Over time, Dolibuk became a new Lanckorona legend and a permanent element of the place’s contemporary heritage.
The unique illustrations for the fairy tale are created by Kraków artist Celine Levitan, who specializes in patchwork paintings. The first Dolibuk adventure titled “The Enchanted Chair” was published in 2021 and again in 2024 (second edition).
The subject of the publishing project is Dolibuk’s second adventure titled “The Mystery of the Old Photograph” – a detective story in which the dwarf, together with a mysterious guest from the English William Fox Talbot Museum of Photography (the father of artistic photography), searches for a gang of thieves stealing photographic artifacts and deciphers a code hidden in an old photograph of Matylda Talbot, the granddaughter of the famous inventor. The clues lead them to the ruins of the castle in Lanckorona.
As Barbara Sadurska writes in her review: along the way we learn a great deal about the history of photography and about maps, and we read excerpts from Matylda Talbot’s diary written a hundred years ago, in which this brave woman, traveler, and photographer mentions, among others, Teofil Korzeniowski – a figure who contributed to Kraków and Lanckorona. And all of this serves to solve an extremely mysterious story set against the backdrop of early prototypes of photographic cameras…
Key artistic values of the project
- The artistic and educational project harmoniously combines two fields of art: word and image.
- It promotes important values such as sustainable development, human rights, empathy, diversity, and the building of connections. Through storytelling, it fosters sensitivity to the beauty of place.
- It popularizes the artistic fairy tale as an attractive and universal literary form and encourages both children and adults to read and tell fairy tales.
- Dolibuk has become a contemporary local legend and participates in cultural and artistic events in the region. In this way, literature is present in public space and becomes part of local community events and activities.
- Lanckorona is an artistic town closely connected with Kraków’s creative circles – theatre, photography, painting, music, film, and literature. Many Kraków-based artists have carried out projects here and drawn inspiration from it in their work.
Information about the Award: https://miastoliteratury.pl/znamy-laureatow-drugiego-w-tym-roku-naboru-do-nagrody-kmlu/