The Warsaw High School Times

Graphic by Rita Pasiewicz

“It’s crazy, it’s party!”. That’s what the Finnish rapper and singer called Käärijä said after his performance in the Grand Final of Eurovision Song Contest last year. Coincidentally, those words also describe the biggest high school festival in Poland. UFO, which stands for Unique Off-Festival (polish Unikatowy Festiwal Offowy), is an annual event organised usually at the beginning of the calendar year by the students of Batory High School in Warsaw. During the two days of the festival, the assembly hall, as well as one wing of the school building, change completely, looking somewhat like a Berlin techno club rather than a polish high school. Unlike Berghain though, it is not hard to get into UFO, as all of the students are welcome, and there is no entry fee. 

The festival is scheduled for the 8th-9th of February 2024, however the work has already started for some of our students, as they are working around the clock to get the needed equipment, secure the artists, and spread the word about festival in social media. Now, it is worth mentioning that the festival is an open-stage form. What does that exactly mean? It means that each and every one of you can perform there! Artists do not get paid, however, as mentioned before, it’s the biggest event of its kind in Poland, and therefore a perfect place for some rising stars, as well as underground acts to blossom and gain a sizeable fanbase. 

Now, organising such a festival is by no means simple. As a staff member for the last year’s edition, I can say that the amount of work shocked me, and seeing the entire school go into overdrive was something unreal to me. The queues are so long they spill outside of school gates, and one might have to wait for over an hour to get in. It’s easy to imagine how massive of an undertaking managing such an amount of highschoolers, all gathered in one half of the Batory HS building really is. The staff is divided into five sections, all working on different aspects of the festival, yet cooperating to ensure the best overall experience. We have financial, decorations, artistic, logistics and technical sections. The logistics and technical sections are most involved to make the festival physically work. Now, remember, everything is done by Batory students, who volunteer to, for example, tirelessly work in the cloakroom for the entire evening, dealing with flocks of people around the clock. 

At the end, everything turns out to work perfectly, and the event itself is a blast. This year, it seems like UFO will be bigger than ever, and so I hope to see you all on the dancefloor on the 8th and 9th of February 2024! I also hope that while having fun, you all will notice the entirety of the work done by our students, and be pleasantly surprised that all of this has been done exclusively by the youth, because we are capable of great things – and UFO is just one example of that!