The Academy of the Finest Arts is an initiative that was introduced to Pol’and’Rock Festival (formerly Station Woodstock) in the year 2006 and has since become a stable element of this largest music festival in Poland. Its main purpose is to serve as an arena for discussions with people playing major roles in Polish public life. The initiative can serve as a case study for how festivals are changing and how they change various aspects of social reality, in this case public discussions.The theoretical frameworks used here include festivalisation, understood as the increasing role festivals play in contemporary reality, and deliberative democracy. The first of those approaches should help to understand how festivals encroach on public life, whereas the latter may aid in understanding how the content of discussions in music festival circumstances changes in comparison to more formal environment. Hopefully, this case study will serve as a basis for general reflections on the festivalisation of politics—and the politicisation of festivals.

Keywords: Pol’and’Rock Festival, Station Woodstock, Academy of the Finest Arts, Jerzy Owsiak, Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity

Pol’and’Rock Festival, known until the year 2017 as Woodstock Station (Przystanek Woodstock), may easily be considered post-transformational Poland's most politically discussed music event, as well as the biggest in the country. Originally created as a form of thanks to the volunteers of the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity foundation, it still maintains strong links to that organisation. As a consequence, this involves the debates surrounding it, as well as its creator Jerzy Owsiak. Additionally, because of the references to the American counter-culture of the sixties, until recently visible in its name, and the accompanying atmosphere of a classic hippie festival, it has long been viewed unfavorably within the circles worrying about the “morality” of youth coming there. It is not surprising, then, that Pol’and’Rock Festival has embraced the politicising labels it has been given, channelling them, however, in a constructive way. Since 2006 Woodstock Station has been offering the event known as the Academy of the Finest Arts (Akademia Sztuk Przepięknych, AFA for short), which was a firm move away from purely artistic and entertaining activities.