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The festival of arts and culture is aimed at helping local people understand more about the backgrounds of those families who've settled here in search of work and a better way of life.

But it comes at a time of increased community tensions in the wake of racially motivated attacks. Mervyn Jess reports from an exhibition of photographs showing the Poles at work, rest and play.

This time last year Mervyn went to Poland for BBC Newsline and sent back some reports about the country that has had such big impact on the lives of people here.

He met business man Bob Little in Krakow who was trying to do business in the city and also spoke to the manager of an Irish bar about his customers and his own reasons for settling in Poland.

A Polish family, now based in Belfast, returned home for daughter Margaret's First Holy Communion. Mervyn caught up with them on either side of their journey and heard about their reasons for moving and what their friends and family in Poland make of it.

Gdansk is a city famous for its shipbuilding as well as industrial strife that hastened the fall of Communism. Mervyn visited the city and met its most famous son and the former President of Poland, Lec Walesa. He asked him about the Polish brain drain, of which Northern Ireland is just one beneficiary.