Dean’s Statement on the Strike Alert at FFA BUT
November is more than a month in the Czech calendar. It reminds us that freedom in this country also grew out of lecture halls and the streets – and that students have repeatedly stood at the forefront of the struggle for it. This November asks us once again whether we merely commemorate this tradition or live it.
The leadership of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology (FFA BUT) protests against the way the Minister of Culture and his ministry have, in recent weeks and months, been dismantling the predictable environment on which public support for culture and the arts depends. Predictability is not a bureaucratic luxury. Without it, it is impossible to prepare an exhibition, make a film, publish a book or run an art school.
The Minister of Culture demanded that planned funding for the audiovisual sector be cut by roughly half, even though the Czech Audiovisual Fund had already published its funding strategies for next year and begun issuing calls for applications. According to a unanimous resolution of the Fund’s Board, such a cut would yield no savings for the state budget, because the minimum level of the state subsidy is set by law. Of the 71 nominated expert assessors, he appointed only 38. He also announced plans to abolish the role of external assessors and, through a legislative amendment, replace the entire membership of the Fund’s Board and all its expert councils.
At the same time, the Ministry has launched a grant application process for the visual arts under conditions which, according to members of its expert committee, make the criteria unclear, weaken the independence of assessment and shift financial risks onto applicants – the galleries, associations and artists with whom our Faculty works every day. Meanwhile, the government is pushing to bring the funding of Czech Television and Czech Radio under the state budget. Yet when the State Cultural Policy 2026–2029 was approved in October, the Minister himself stressed that it was intended to bring greater predictability to the cultural sector.
We do not regard this treatment of cultural and artistic institutions and the professional community as reform. We see ill will and incompetence in it. Unpredictable changes to the rules and interference in independent expert decision-making open the way to political control.
At the recent graduation ceremony, I said that feigned apoliticism and the neutrality of the institution as a whole are two different things: the latter protects the freedom to take a stand; the former gives it up. To teach is to take a stand on what is meaningful – and to explain why. Feigned apoliticism is just a way of dodging responsibility. Space to express views and take a stand is part of our Faculty’s institutional culture – and its leadership must not ignore worsening conditions for free creative practice in the wider environment of which the school is part.
For these reasons:
- the leadership of FFA BUT supports the student strike alert at our Faculty and endorses the calls issued by the academic communities of other art faculties and academies;
- I declare Tuesday 3 November 2026 a Dean’s Day (a day free of teaching), so that students and teaching staff can join the protest organised by the Veřejnoprávně initiative and support the striking employees of Czech Television and Czech Radio;
- as a member of the Association of Audiovisual Faculties, FFA BUT has joined the joint statement by professional and sectoral organisations, which warns of the planned interventions affecting the Czech Audiovisual Fund and the threat to the stability and predictability of funding for the Czech audiovisual sector;
- the leadership of FFA BUT stands behind the statement by members of the Czech Ministry of Culture’s expert committee for professional visual arts and their demand for predictable rules, respect for expert recommendations and timely payment of approved funding.
When we looked back on the past years under the Faculty’s current leadership, we wrote: “Neither trust nor openness is a state; each is a practice that must be renewed every day.” The same is true of predictability: it cannot simply be declared or proclaimed once and for all. With every decision, we either uphold it or break it. Caring for an open school does not stop at its doors. We need a public space that our creative work and thinking can freely enter. A space where one can agree or disagree, stay silent, speak softly or scream, without political opinion becoming the measure of expertise. Caring for such a space means speaking up when a chosen few close it off.
Filip Cenek
Dean of FFA BUT
Brno, 29 October 2026
| Author | doc. MgA. Filip Cenek |
|---|---|
| Published | |
| Short URL | https://www.favu.vut.cz/en//f26745/d378682 |