The Center is a local government cultural institute in Lublin, working for the preservation of cultural heritage and education. In its programs the Center invokes the symbolic and historical meaning of its location, the Grodzka Gate (the former gate between the Christian and the Jewish cities), and of the city of Lublin, a meeting place of cultures, traditions and religions.

The NN Theater was founded in 1990. At first its activities concentrated on presenting original theater pieces. With the passing of time, the creators of the Theater began to open up to other social and educational activities outside of the arts. The Center reconstructed its headquarters, the 14th-century Grodzka Gate and adjoining townhouses, reinvigorating this part of the Lublin's old and deteriorated city center.

The Center's program activities are connected with restoring the memory of Jewish life in Lublin. The Center organizes and hosts arts activities, exhibitions, meetings, sessions, book and magazine promotions, films, concerts and public activities. It also runs a publishing house, which poetry and other books, and Scriptores Scholarum. In 1998, the Center began a program entitled "The Great Book of the City", gathering archive materials connected with the Polish-Jewish history of Lublin (photographs, oral history and documents). A constantly expanding documentary exhibition based on these materials describes the prewar bicultural city of Lublin. It is accompanied by an educational program devoted to perpetuating the legacy of the Lublin Jews.

The Center also runs a program entitled "The Forgotten Past: The Multicultural Traditions of the Lublin Region". It is addressed mainly to young residents and their teachers. In creating the program, the organizers started from the assumption that school should become a setting for education about the past and the cultural heritage. The main aim of the program is to help students understand their native region and actively participate in its life. The Grodzka Gate NN Theater is also carrying out a project entitled "The Virtual Library of Lublin and the Lublin Region", a computer database with four parts: texts, pictorial material, sound, and educational.

A particular form of the Center's cooperation with teachers is the "Roads of the Past" School Discovery Club, a network of almost 100 clubs from all over Lublin Province. The web site includes a section entitled "Little Homeland", an expression referring to the heritage of one's native region. The database includes more than 80 texts from magazines and publications published by the Grodzka Gate NN Theater Center.