-To inform public at large about the support of culture by the municipality of Prague.
-To initiate public discussion about culture, its expression, needs and demands.
-To acquire grounding for a conception including attitudes and demands of the broad public.
The project was designed as open and independent of any particular interest group within the artistic community. To secure the independence, we have formed a project team which includes representatives of the municipality, cultural events providers, institutions, renowned researchers and experts. The project team discusses and approves each step of the project, and it comments the development of the project. On November 24, we arranged a public discussion “About the cultural city of Prague or what lacks and what is redundant in Prague’s culture” in Perštýn theater. The debate was attended by over 100 experts and amateurs. In the course of the debate, a videoanquette, that was edited out of survey made by students of sociology at the streets of Prague, was displayed. We are preparing the debate in cooperation of Lidové noviny daily . This newspaper (broadsheet type) devoted a page of the November 30 issue to summarize the outcomes of the discussion.
According to the fact that the young people are frequent consumers and participants in cultural events of some kinds, we have arranged a discussion devoted especially to them in Roxy club. Based on the project team proposals, we have made a collection of the crucial texts concerning cultural policy.
This period has been devoted to the expert team work, which was handled by dividing our experts and theri respective issues into a round table discussion. Initially, the project team decided to establish 4 expert round-tables: A. Cultural potential of Prague, B. Accessibility and barriers, C. Innovations and continuities, D. Support of culture from the public funds. Each expert group met three times and it should have prepared expert text, that was handed over to the municipality as a cultural policy grounding. According to the advise from the artist and expert community, we have decided to form just 2 groups:
The list of people that participated at the expert round-tables may be found here 
. Each member was asked to fill in a brief questionnaire.
The first meeting of the expert round-tables took place February 1. At the "cultural potential" part, 21 people participated and the main issue was a SWOT analysis of the cultural potential of Prague. The second group consisted of 19 people and the two issues were of main concern were: 1) grant schemes and 2) other sources of support.
Second meeting was scheduled for February 22. The “cultural potential” group worked on defining principles, that should be followed in the future shape of the culture in Prague, and they also tried to predict the critical and strong momentums among the development opportunities. The “support group” discussed all other sources of funding apart from the grant scheme.
The last expert round-table meeting was held on November 8 in the Archa theatre. The meeting has been part of a seminar called “On the way to the cultural strategy”, and the meeting was prepared in cooperation with Archa theatre and the British council. The morning session was led by the renown cultural policy expert Robert Palmer, the afternoon session was devoted to the expert meetings.
Up to now, Agora CE has completed all the actions planned in the scheme of the project. It has created an open dialogue with wide public “audience” (public debate in November 2004) including the youth public debate in January 2005. We have addressed more than 150 members of the art and cultural community and we further cooperated with 40 of them by creating a series of expert round-table discussions. Furthemore, we used a foreign expert in the cultural policy field, Mr. Robert Palmer. The development of the project is monitored by the “project team”, which has also set the profound orientation and objectives. The results Agora has (just in Czech, accessible through the Czech web pages) are worthy of being a premise for the formulation of Prague’s cultural policy.
As an alternative source of information and positions, we consider inviting a few public figures to formulate their own views on the future shape of the cultural policy in Prague. Their visions would be assembled to form a publication called: “Semi-vision of Culture”.
The results of the expert teams will be presented publicly at Prague’s cultural festival. At the very end of the project, the outcomes will be presented to the municipality of Prague.
The final
round of student´s debates will take place in the Parliament of Czech Republic (Státní
akta, Snìmoví 4, Praha 1) on the June 2nd at 10 o’clock.
The attendees
will be students from four debating teams that won the regional rounds. The
winner will be published at our website after the final.
Agora CE
organizes public debate focusing on changes of the Spatial Plan in Jesenice. It
will take place on January 20 at 6pm in Disco bar Holiday in Jesenice.
The public
debate is a part of bigger project called Suburbanization conference.