Maria Kossak, the artist with ties to both cities and founder of the Berlin-Warsaw @rtpress facebook group, is the prime mover behind the project. The idea of developing a platform which would bring together most interesting cultural events in both cities was conceived in the Neukölln district of Berlin. The area has been buzzing with all sorts of creative initiatives for several years now; it has also become a home for many people engaged in Polish culture. The decision to launch the project was made one afternoon in the summer of 2015 in Neukölln, during a meeting of Maria Kossak and writer and journalist Beata Chomątowska.

The platform is a fruit of both fascination with Berlin and Warsaw, and irritation at perfunctory comparisons often made between the two. It is also driven by a realisation of how many grass-root contacts there are between artistic milieus in both cities and yet how scattered those contacts are, and how they lack a collective platform for exchanging creative ideas. After many hours spent discussing the project, its shape has finally surfaced – a virtual cultural-social review produced as part of Berlin-Warsaw partnership and cooperation. Both cities are often referred to as ‘dynamic’, ‘innovative’ or ‘independent’ – why not let them commingle in the melting pot also known as Berlin-Warsaw @rtpress