Jan Palach Square as a space for neighbourly meetings, art and living culture – this is the concept of the festival Open Square organised by four institutions: Faculty of Arts, Charles University; Czech Philharmonic; Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague; and the Prague Institute of Planning and Development. In October 2015, the second year of the festival took place.
On Saturday 17 October, Jan Palach Square in Prague was brought to life by an outdoor exhibition, stalls, concerts, workshops, lectures, and debates. Apart from the presentations of the individual study programmes for potential applicants, the Faculty of Arts offered a number of student activities: a mini-course of sign language, a guided tour of the forgotten nooks and crannies of the main building, and a workshop prepared by students of the new media where participants could make portraits out of ASCII signs. The umbrella theme this year was Imaginary Worlds: Imagination, Creativity and Inspiration.
Visitors could also take advantage of the Open Doors Day at the Czech Philharmonic in Rudolfinum and go for a guided tour of the building, of the violin maker’s workshop, and of the recording studio. During the day, various chamber ensembles played music, and in the basement, musicians from the Czech Philharmonic offered workshops for the public. All these activities, as well as the game „In the Footsteps of the Music Spirit“, were in high demand.
The festival was accompanied by an outdoor exhibition „Do You Know Prague?“ about life in Prague in numbers, charts, and maps. The whole day was closed by a panel discussion on the theme „The Centre of Prague in 2040“. Together with the audience, representatives of the participating institutions were considering the question whether the old centre of Prague could be transformed into a space controlled not only by big institutions but also by the citizens.
