Ladies and Gentlemen,
Another – fifty-fifth – year has passed in the history of our University. Among the many events and matters that made this year exceptional, I would like to point out the concept of the City of Science, which is being developed and realised before our very eyes. From the beginning of the efforts to obtain this title for Katowice, we wanted it to be something more than an honorary emblem worn for a year. The creation of an agreement of seven public universities in Katowice was a clear signal of this. Since then, we have been working intensively on creating the programme assumptions for the 2024 celebrations, and at the same time we are analysing the joint scientific, didactic, social and communication potential as well as the infrastructure of the seven universities of the Academic Consortium “Katowice – City of Science”. Thanks to this, we become more aware of the richness of science, art and education, and the social impact of our diversity. We are becoming more and more aware that the permanent effect of 2024 may be a real City of Science. By this we mean the open space defined by our universities, in which Katowice citizens, its guests and visitors, scholars, students and doctoral students talk, deliberate, and experiment on ways to improve individual and social life. And they do it in a way appropriate for conversation and academic work.
We would like the year 2024 to be a great hypothesis, put together and tested together, whether we can create conditions so that everyone who finds themselves in the space of the City of Science can ask any question and get the most credible answer to it. We are working hard to make the Green Rawa Zone a prototype of such a space – a river revitalised in the near future, on the green banks of which citizen science as well as friendly and pleasant urban life will flourish.
We will not be able to revise this dream, we will not be able to check the hypothesis, we will not be able to conduct the experiment without you – scientists, employees, doctoral students, and students. That is why I invite you to a joint adventure of thinking and scientific activity in the space of the city.
I suggest you start by familiarising yourself with the material available at: https://issuu.com/uniwersytetslaski/docs/brief-_emn2024, which contains the programme assumptions of the European City of Science 2024. They are based on three pillars:
- the programme of the ECS 2024 celebrations,
- EuroScience Open Forum conference,
- infrastructure of the City of Science.
In each of these areas, we will be happy to welcome you – our associates. I especially strongly encourage you to submit proposals for the main programme of the celebrations, which will take place in 2024. Each of the 50 Weeks of the City of Science will be devoted to an important or key issue of Polish and world science, the solution to which has a direct impact on our lives and is important for the transformation of our region. Please, submit suggestions for thematic weeks via the form.
We will wait for your submissions until 25 June 2023. In the following months, we will invite the academic community to submit detailed initiatives that can be implemented in specific weeks. If you are interested in cooperation in other programme areas of the City of Science, please contact: emn@us.edu.pl.
Our birthday
The anniversary of the establishment of our University is always a reason to celebrate and to express gratitude for the existence and development of the most important academic institution in the region, which is the University of Silesia – our University. The traditional celebratory academic concert will take place on 16 June at 6:00 p.m. in the Concert Hall of the Academy of Music in Katowice. Its focus will be Wojciech Kilar. We owe the programme of the concert and its implementation to our colleagues from the Institute of Music of the University of Silesia. The artistic concept of the concert is explained by: Magdalena Szyndler, PhD, DLitt, Assoc. Prof., Deputy Dean for Science and Artistic Creation at the Faculty of Arts and Educational Science of the University of Silesia, and Agnieszka Kopińska, PhD, DLitt, Deputy Director of the Institute of Music at the Faculty of Arts and Educational Science of the University of Silesia. I encourage you to watch the video.
May each of us be enlivened and strengthened by the energy of the academic community. Let’s celebrate the fifty-fifth anniversary of our University and let’s create the City of Science together – on the foundation of the university and in its radiation.
Yours faithfully
Prof. Ryszard Koziołek
Rector of the University of Silesia
Magdalena Szyndler, PhD, DLitt, Assoc. Prof. and Agnieszka Kopińska, PhD, DLitt about the 27th Academic Concert
Rectorate of the University of Silesia Photo by Julia Agnieszka Szymala