Name

About Sites of Creativity

About project

Success in the preservation and presentation of material and non-material cultural heritage invariably depends on how well we understand the conditions of its creation in the past. Knowledge of these conditions is no less essential for the correct expert interpretation of this heritage. Artistic education represents the basic level on which the conditions are formulated for future artistic, applied-artistic, and design work.

The project examines the traditions of Czech (respectively Czech-German) artistic education from the mid-19th century to the end of the 20th at secondary and higher artistic schools, with a primary focus on artistic crafts, applied arts, and design. It aims to reveal what concepts, ideas, and skills were taught at these specialised institutions, how the ministerial guidelines and instruction programs were adapted and developed by individual pedagogues, and how the graduates used them in their own practice. This information will assist in the clarification, improvement, and innovation of art-historical interpretation models and conservation techniques.

It also investigates the role that these specific educational traditions held in the context of Czech-German and Czech-Slovak cultural relations in the construction of Czech national and cultural identity. The entire project consists of eight outputs, to be realised successively up to 2027.

Dedication

The project Sites of Creativity. Arts and Crafts Education: Constructing Identities, Rescuing Heritage, Designing the Future (DH23P03OVV061) is financially supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic as part of the Program for the Applied Research of National and Cultural Identity (NAKI III).

Project Recipient

Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague (UMPRUM)

Principal Investigator

Lada Hubatová-Vacková

Research Team

Milena Bartlová, David Bláha, Klára Brůhová, Jan Čumlivski, Lada Hubatová-Vacková, Iva Knobloch, Valéria Kršiaková, Kateřina Kuthanová, Johana Lomová, Vojtěch Märc, Martina Pachmanová, Pavla Pauknerová, Michaela Režová, Veronika Rollová, Cyril Říha, Tereza Vernerová Volná, Jindřich Vybíral, Jan Wollner, Tomáš Zapletal

Graphic design of website

Daniel Šmíra

Website programming

Studio Iteran

IT support

Jan Netušil

Translation

Martin Tharp

Czech proofreading

Jan Kovanda