About Sites of Creativity. Applied Arts Education: Constructing Identities, Saving the Past, and Designing the Future

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.

Principal Investigator: prof. Mgr. Lada Hubatová-Vacková, PhD.
Project number: DH23P03OVV061
Realization period: 03/23 – 12/27
Provider: Ministry of Culture
Amount of finances granted: 44 500 000 CZK