I managed to snag a ticket to the 2025 Urban Sketchers Symposium in Poznań, Poland.
The plan was always to go this year, but when the buying window opened, the only word I can use to describe it is harrowing. With only 450 tickets available and thousands of urban sketchers around the globe all trying to grab one, they were vanishing right under my “buy now” button. It was pure luck (and only luck) that I got one at all.
That ticket moment feels like a lifetime ago. Now it’s just three more sleeps until I board my flight to Poland and walk into this incredible gathering of artists from around the world.
Five New Zealanders are heading to the symposium: two of us have tickets, one is on the board, one is faculty and will be teaching, and two are coming along to join in where they can (and plenty of people do that). This is the largest representation of kiwis at an Urban Sketchers’ Symposium ever.
Every morning, my Instagram feed fills with more and more sketches from Warsaw, Kraków, and Gdańsk as people make their way to Poznań for the opening ceremony on 20 August.
I’ve been buzzing for months, but now I’ve slipped into that strange pre-trip calm — the duldrums where you almost forget that in just a few days, you’ll be halfway across the world.
I have been very excited for so long now I’m in the duldrums not even realising I’m flying to Europe on Sunday. This might be why I’ve left one of my projects until the very last minute – sewing a shirt printed with one of my sketches.
The material I ordered arrived months ago; I’ve had plenty of time to make this shirt but left to to last night to start! I’m not even telling you for accountability because truly, it will be a flipping miracle if I finish it in time.