Chmiel was a co-founder of the
Citizens of Culture (, OK) movement in 2009. Citizens of Culture proposed a law to the lower house of Polish parliament, the
Sejm, in 2009. The law was rejected. A formal "Pact for Culture" was formalised by the
Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland, based on discussions between national government administrations, local governments, citizens' groups and Citizens of Culture. The coordination aimed to include cultural institutes and artists' trade unions. Two formal committees created were the Team for the Pact () and the Social Committee for the pact (), whose memberships were listed on the Citizens of Culture website. In signing the Pact, the government promised to present a citizens' media law to parliament. Citizens of Culture repeatedly reminded the government of the promise, which was not fulfilled. The Citizens of Culture did not have a president or board, and had no funding. Decision-making aimed at
consensus decisions, but decisions were signed by those who supported them. The group aimed at wide participation by citizens in cultural activities. In 2015, Chmiel was a co-founder of the "I choose without Hate" () coalition. In 2016, when Citizens of Culture was one of the co-founders of the ''Citizens' Pact for Public Media'' (), Chmiel stated that new laws on public media created by the government at the time "only changed the people in power in executive boards and is a return to the times of the Polish People's Republic, when the president of the Radio Committee was chosen by and directly controlled by the government." Chmiel described the Citizens' Pact as creating a citizens' coalition that aimed at convincing all political parties that public media should by run by citizens, not by political parties. Chmiel said that those who signed the Citizens' Pact had fought for six years "for independent and strong public media, strong in their mission, both financially and as an institution" and that public media should support artists, popularise culture, equalise access to education and culture and support reading. Chmiel stated in May 2020 that the problems of Polish public media predated the 2016 appointment of
Jacek Kurski as head of
Telewizja Polska. She saw the problem starting with a shift in funding from subscriptions to
advertising and
market pressure, which evolved into politically based state funding, converting the public media into a propaganda tool for winning elections. She criticised politicians, advertisers and producers of low-quality content. Chmiel said that culture rather than entertainment should play a major role in public media. ==References==