Our background
EWA CIC was established in June 2013 following the merger of two community organisations: Midlands Polish Community Centre (MPCC) and Polish Artists in London (PAIL). The main purpose of this union was to combine various threads of community work being done by dedicated leaders. Consequently, our organisation provides a holistic service, ranging from the education of children through our supplementary school, to social engagement with local authorities and charities, as well as advice and guidance services which support the most vulnerable members of our community.
The spark for EWA CIC came out of the dream of Polish parents gathered in a Walsall school hall in mid-2009. It was primarily a dream driven by the innate parental desire of nurturing in their young children a sense of Polishness through the cultivation of language and culture, it also signified a social vision. Representing a collective desire by parents and children to develop locally a greater sense of Polish community, investing in a shared space, something which would later be referred to as a ‘community-hub’. In both senses then, it was a question revolving around roots and community representation.
Many of the people involved in the founding of the supplementary school in 2009 were first-generation migrants, people who had left Poland following their countries entrance into the European Union on 1 May 2004. Up to the forming of the school there was no physical Polish community presence in Walsall, while in the broader West Midlands a sense of something which could be called, a Polish-Midlands community was still rather nascent.
