The project "Cooperation of art universities and faculties and local public partners and entities of creative industries on the presentation of educational and creative activity" focuses on contemporary possibilities to extend the internal level of art education towards future applicants, graduates and applied practice. This approach follows continuity with previous related projects (Art Calls! and STUDY ART realized at FaVU VUT in Brno), their sustainability and acceleration towards the development of creative thinking are being accented. An important part of the project is the presentation of practice which extends the university process to implementation, presentation and further development in the area of creative industries in collaboration with regional public subjects.

The key activity of the new follow-up project is the organization of a group exhibition - GARDEN PARTY. Art faculties and universities will present selected creative outputs of students and teachers from the fields of visual and audio-visual arts, design, performative arts and music production, which in some cases are connected to a selected area of local creative industries (in the region of given art college or faculty). In addition to the classical art-forms in the exhibition hall of the Ústí nad Labem House of Art (painting, sculpture, graphics, new media, advertising photography, graphic and product design), the project also includes live activities entering the public space such as environmental or guerilla projects and more.

The GARDEN PARTY exhibition examines the theme of the festival from the perspective of social rituals, latently connected with natural processes, often represented in the form of traditional or, on the contrary, degraded socio-cultural phenomena. The very title of the exhibition refers to one of Václav Havel's key dramatic work, in which the phenomenon of the festival is ideologically and power-instrumentalized and deformed. The major significance of this absurd drama lies in the critique of opinion conformism, careerism and the moral decline of society in the 1960s. On a more general level, it refers to the criticism of any central power structure that develops its own communication complex just for maintaining its own ideology and power. The exhibition project tries to symbolically update this legacy in contemporary society conditions and contextualize art schools as institutions that not only fulfill an educational function in their region, but also cultivate and educate the local environment on multiple levels (as social, cultural, spiritual, environmental, political or ecological field). In partial artworks, authors comment on current life standards qualities through personal creative statements. For example, exhibiting artists question the problematic resources of their own region, confront the audience with an ambiguous reflection of the recent past and lacking capability to face its dark sides, or try to confront rural customs and traditions linked to natural processes with post-industrial society. Václav Havel's original Garden Festival dramatic work can thus stand as a real celebration of creative, surreal, visionary and at the same time functional projects which - although speaking different languages and using various media - follow common meaningful goals.

Art colleges involved
Univerzita Jana Evangelisty Purkyně v Ústí nad Labem, Fakulta umění a designu
Vysoké učení technické v Brně, Fakulta výtvarných umění
Univerzita Tomáše Bati ve Zlíně, Fakulta multimediálních komunikací
Technická univerzita v Liberci, Fakulta umění a architektury
Ostravská univerzita, Fakulta umění
Slezská univerzita v Opavě, Filozoficko-přírodovědecká fakulta, Institut tvůrčí fotografie
Janáčkova akademie múzických umění v Brně, Hudební fakulta