Since March 2025, we have been trying to find out how much public money will be spent on an event involving painting people with clay slip during this year’s Bolesławiec Ceramic Festival (BŚC). The event is organized by Bolesławiec restaurateur, hotelier and performer Bogusław Nowak. In 2024, the parade of people painted with clay that Bogusław Nowak organized cost taxpayers nearly PLN 100,000.

The cost of such an event in 2025, as it turns out, is the most closely guarded secret.

We asked the city spokesperson Agnieszka Gergont about the event’s cost, but she shifted responsibility for answering to BOK–MCC director Kornel Filipowicz. He, in turn, made a tremendous effort to avoid providing this information from March to July 2025. If even some percentage of the creativity with which he found excuses to conceal the actual expenditure on Bogusław Nowak’s theatre had been used to create this year’s ceramic festival programme, it would have been the best festival in the event’s history.

At first, Filipowicz avoided answering, citing the fact that he had not signed contracts with the entities involved.

“BOK–MCC is in the process of preparing the programme for the 31st BŚC. Information about the entities participating in the 31st BŚC will be made public after the relevant contracts with them have been signed,” Kornel Filipowicz initially wrote to the istotne.pl editorial office.

Then he seized on the fact that he still had not prepared the festival programme.

“It is not possible to provide an answer due to the lack of a detailed event programme at this stage,” the BOK–MCC director reported.

Finally, in July, information about a partial amount for Bogusław Nowak was obtained from Filipowicz. The director needed 14 days to inform the public about it.

“(...) Bogusław Nowak will receive a gross amount of PLN 15,000 for organizing and carrying out the opening of the 31st BŚC on 15 August 2025,” Kornel Filipowicz wrote. “The activities of the Teatr Parada z miłości do gliny on 16 August 2025 will not be financed by BOK–MCC,” the director announced.

Who, then, is financing the parade at the 31st Ceramic Festival, known as Bogusław Nowak’s Theatre? What is its cost? And why is it being so carefully hidden from the public? Is it because last year’s PLN 100,000 was significantly exceeded? Or perhaps this local entrepreneur decided to finance the parade himself?