Prague Cultural Forum 2025: CENTERS: cultural? creative?
A Message from the City and the State
The opening remarks were attended by Minister of Culture Martin Baxa and Deputy Mayor of Prague Jiří Pospíšil. Both emphasized that cultural and creative centers are not just buildings, but lively places where people meet, new ideas arise, and community as well as cultural life takes place. In the context of the National Renewal Plan, they believe it is crucial to find sustainable forms of funding for these spaces and to strengthen cooperation between the public and private sectors.
International Inspiration: Łódź, Bratislava, Netherlands
One of the highlights of the conference was a keynote presentation by Agata Etmanowicz of the Polish Impact Foundation. The latter presented the Fabryk Sztuki project in Łódź — a former factory that has been transformed into a vibrant creative hub. Agata shared that a successful centre needs not just funding, but mainly trust, flexibility and openness to communities.
Laco Oravec from the Cvernovka Foundation shared the experience of the transformation of Bratislava's Nové Cvernovka. He showed how important strategic planning, good building management and the ability to combine public finances with private revenue are. Nová Cvernovka is today the largest cultural center in Slovakia and contributes significantly to the development of cultural infrastructure in Bratislava.
The discussions also included experiences from the Dutch Game Garden centre or from Czech projects such as Karlín Barracks, Žďár nad Sázavou Castle, KUMST Brno and many others.
What do cultural and creative centers need to flourish?
The panel discussion showed the diversity of forms as well as the challenges that cultural and creative centers address. They talked about the legal form of operators, ownership of buildings, community work, program offer as well as the relationship with the city administration. There was an important question: how to strike a balance between freedom and stability?
Representatives of cultural centres agreed on the need to create long-term strategic frameworks to enable cultural and creative centres to plan, develop and fulfil their public mission. At the same time, they highlighted the need for early local community involvement, transparent communication and clearly defined objectives.
Practical Workshops: How to Operate Sustainably
The second part of the day was carried out in the spirit of practical workshops led by Agata Etmanowicz and Jane-Pieter van Seventer. The first workshop offered practical instructions on how to build a functional cultural infrastructure from an unused building, step by step. The second workshop focused on business models of cultural centers — participants dealt with different income structures, types of services and management principles.
Why We Do It: Openness, Collaboration and Systemic Development
Creative Prague considers the Prague Cultural Forum to be a key platform for building dialogue between cultural actors, the city administration and the professional public. In 2025, it also fits into Year of creativity, when our organization is intensively dedicated to supporting cultural and creative sectors in the Czech Republic and in Europe.
Cooperation with foreign professionals and female professionals is an integral part of this effort. Open dialogue and the sharing of know-how help to find ways to foster creativity, develop cities and create space for a quality life for all of us.
A record of PKF 2025 can be found on our youtube.
