Abstract
In the article, the author presents the nation as an ethnic, cultural as well as political group. Also, the author’s experience of workshops for adolescents conducted at the University of Gdansk is described. The starting point for the meetings was the etude The Birth of a Nation (Pol. Narodziny narodu) by Kamil Polak, a minimalistic animation about the rise and the fall of a certain nation. The proposed model of the etude starts with a universal story based on the impersonal metaphor of the circle and it continues to the students’ “here and now”, revealing the axiological dilemmas of the young recipients of culture. Not only the views of students regarding the issue of nationality are presented in the article, but also it reveals how this knowledge is constructed.