Looking Back on 2019–2025 is neither an annual report nor a catalogue of achievements, but a personal, interpretative reflection on the period under review, written by the Dean of the Faculty. It views the Faculty’s transformation primarily as the cultivation of conditions for study, creative practice and work; quantitative indicators are therefore presented as partial evidence of this transformation, not as a definition of quality. The changes in teaching and learning described here – more individualised approaches to study, greater student participation, a shift in assessment towards qualitative feedback, and efforts to foster safe and respectful relationships – can also be read in the context of the broader European shift towards student-centred learning. The text seeks to articulate the distinctive character of artistic, pedagogical and research practice in intelligible institutional language without reducing it to generic performance indicators.

Looking Back on 2019–2025

Over the period under review, the Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology (hereinafter ‘FFA BUT’ or ‘the Faculty’) implemented a series of changes that visibly transformed its institutional, educational and creative profile and strengthened its standing within Czech higher education in the arts.¹ A shared understanding underpinned these individual steps: that an art school should above all be an open environment enabling the development of talent, critical thinking and responsibility for one’s own work. We therefore saw development not merely as improvements in indicators, but as sustained care for the conditions in which art and research come into being: for trust between people and the institution, for social safety, for relationships that do not end at graduation, and for a culture in which work feels meaningful. We are aware that this shared understanding is one we recognise partly in hindsight. Many of these steps began as pragmatic responses to particular situations, and the sense they make together is easier to name now than it was to act on at the time.

At the same time, an art faculty must also be able to hold its own within systems of evaluation that were never designed for art – not in order to submit to them, but to demonstrate clearly what art brings to a (technical) university and to society. In the end, the quality of an institution is not revealed in tables and charts,² but in the everyday experience of those who study and work here, and in what the school leaves behind in the public and lived realm – a realm that art itself helps to shape and rethink.

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Evaluation and study

The EQ-Arts evaluation provides an external reference point at the beginning of the period under review: an international team visited the Faculty in autumn 2019, and its final report, published in early 2020, captured the institution at a time of transformation. It identified the quality assurance system, internal communication, the organisational structure and decision-making processes, and methods for assessing practical work as the principal areas for improvement; further recommendations concerned institutional accreditation, internationalisation and the professional development of teaching staff. Because of its narrower programme-level focus and different methodology, the report cannot be directly compared with the evaluations of 2024 and 2025; as an initial diagnosis, however, it makes it possible to trace how these areas evolved in the years that followed.

In the evaluation of research organisations conducted by the International Evaluation Panel (IEP) for the 2026–2030 national categorisation of higher education institutions, the Faculty markedly improved its result in 2025. In Module 3, focused on the quality and societal relevance of research, it moved from a C (average level) for 2014–2018 to an A (outstanding level) for 2019–2023 – despite the systemic limitations affecting the assessment of artistic disciplines within a technical university. The Faculty was also assessed separately in BUT’s 2024 institutional evaluation: a three-member team of evaluators from arts and research institutions in Austria, Croatia and Switzerland awarded its research and creative activities an A2 rating (above-standard international level), the second-highest of the five grades on the scale used.

Alongside the development of its research environment, the Faculty succeeded in halting the decline in student numbers,³ which had occurred between 2011 and 2018, particularly at Master’s level.⁴ It also substantially strengthened doctoral studies and stabilised the structure of the student body at the target ratio of 4:2:1 across the Bachelor’s, Master’s and doctoral levels. This development was guided by an internal analysis of funding and sustainable student numbers conducted at the beginning of the dean’s term of office. The analysis considered the Faculty’s spatial capacity, public funding levels and the scope for improving performance and visibility. On this basis, the Faculty increased student numbers each year, with an emphasis on its research profile. The total number of students thus gradually rose from 258 to 388.

While larger age cohorts increased the potential applicant pool by around 16%,⁵ interest in studying at the Faculty grew considerably faster: thanks in part to more systematic communication and the Faculty’s growing reputation,⁶ the number of applications more than doubled from 429 for the academic year 2019/20 to 884 for 2025/26. This heightened interest was also reflected in admissions selectivity; since 2021, FFA BUT has consistently ranked among the three most selective institutions in the Czech Republic.⁷ Selectivity is not in itself a direct measure of teaching quality or student outcomes; having more applicants than available places does, however, give the Faculty a broad pool from which to select those whose aptitudes are suited to the nature and demands of its degree programmes. We do not regard these aptitudes as fully formed or fixed: they are shaped by a person’s environment and prior experience, by the art they have encountered and by their own creative work. What matters for study, therefore, is not only what applicants bring with them but also a willingness to keep developing that work and reflecting on it; the Faculty’s role is to create the conditions in which that can happen.

A key milestone was BUT’s institutional accreditation in the field of Arts, obtained in 2021, which made it possible to further transform the Faculty’s educational framework. The Faculty reaccredited its degree programmes and restructured its programme portfolio, dividing the original programme ‘Výtvarné umění’ into two separate programmes, ‘Volné umění’ (Fine Arts) and ‘Design’, and introducing an English-taught Master’s programme for self-funded students. The doctoral programme was also granted new accreditation, and an English-language version was added. The transition to the new curricula was not, however, without friction: in Design, for instance, the expectations of students, studio teachers and theory teachers had to be aligned during the first year, even though dividing the programme had itself been intended to bring study closer to the needs of the field.

During the period under review, the very conception of studio teaching also shifted, and the two teachers leading each studio were placed on an equal footing, now sharing responsibility for running it. Technical and craft training increasingly moved into courses provided by the departments and specialised units, while the studio focused more closely on the development of students’ individual creative projects, critical reflection on their work and collective discussion. The experience of the pandemic, the emphasis on social safety and the need for more individualised approaches to study also changed the demands placed on studio leadership: these now include sensitivity to students’ different working rhythms and personal circumstances, more explicitly formulated assessment criteria, clearly communicated feedback, and respect for the boundaries between professional roles. The reaccreditation then replaced the grading of end-of-semester work with qualitative assessment by the committee, for which each studio has as much time as it needs. At other art schools and faculties, too, a model of teaching centred on a single leading figure is giving way to one built on exchange between the creative practices of teachers and students. This shift, however, is one we keep thinking through, including its risks, so that shared leadership does not blur responsibility for a studio’s direction and, as personal pedagogical authority weakens, art teaching does not become administrative coordination.

Organisation and sectoral representation

The Faculty’s organisational structure underwent a fundamental transformation. The number of vice-deans doubled, and their portfolios were divided to reflect differences between artistic and scientific research and to distribute responsibility more broadly across the Faculty’s leadership. In cooperation with the University Bursar, the position of Faculty Bursar was filled at the turn of 2019/20, stabilising a key component of the Faculty’s financial and administrative management. New support and development units were established – notably the Project Support Office, the Office for Creative and Educational Activities, the Production and Public Relations Office, the Department of Design, and the Research Centre. Together, these units strengthened the Faculty’s research, artistic and interdisciplinary activities, its engagement with professional practice, and its involvement in applied and contract research. The Faculty’s study support structures were further expanded through positions providing methodological support for teaching in Czech-taught Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes and ensuring the administrative coordination of doctoral studies. This structure was formalised in the first-ever Organizational Rules, issued following the Faculty’s new Statutes; a number of earlier shortcomings in the Faculty’s internal regulations were remedied at the same time.

Alongside the transformation of its own organisational structure, the Faculty strengthened its role in sectoral representation and advocacy for higher education in the arts. During its presidency of the Association of Art Faculties (AUF) from 2023 to 2026, FFA BUT participated in coordinating joint initiatives with the Czech Rectors’ Conference (ČKR), the Council of Higher Education Institutions (RVŠ) and other partners. The AUF’s arguments were among the contributions to a broader debate in the course of which the allocation to the Artistic Activities Fund (FUČ) within the funding framework for public higher education institutions was doubled from 2025 onwards.⁸ FFA BUT also took part in founding the Association of Audiovisual Faculties in 2023. The Association strengthens the joint representation of these fields and their position in legislative, cultural and educational debates, including in relation to the amendment to the Audiovisual Act and the creation of the Czech Audiovisual Fund. An unresolved issue in sectoral representation is contemporary art curating: neither the Register of Artistic Outputs (RUV) nor the Information Register of R&D Results (RIV) yet records it explicitly, even though it is a standard part of the practice of teaching staff and graduates across higher education in the arts. The Faculty’s own development cannot be separated from shared responsibility for the conditions of a field in which other institutions also seek resources and recognition.

Alumni and community

Since 2019, the Faculty has worked more actively with its graduates and maintained closer ties with them. It offers work opportunities connected with its diploma exhibitions – particularly in curating, exhibition architecture, graphic design and photography. Graduates are also invited to serve on the juries assessing end-of-semester studio work and to take part in other Faculty activities. In cooperation with the Brno House of Arts, FFA BUT selects one graduate each year for a two-month Brno AiR residency at the House of the Lords of Kunštát, culminating in an exhibition at Gallery G99. Another support programme, introduced in 2021 in partnership with Open Studios Art Hub, awards two incubator residencies annually, each providing a year’s free use of a shared starter studio on the BUT campus at Kraví hora, together with career development support and opportunities to present work to arts professionals. Since 2020, the Faculty has also enabled its graduates to rent studio space at favourable rates and use specialised facilities and workshops during the summer holidays.

In 2023, the Faculty introduced the Post-mag and Post-doc FFA programmes, which it has continued to develop. Through short-term positions filled via open calls, the programmes are intended to help recent graduates of art schools and faculties, and other early-career researchers and artists, move into professional practice, while stimulating the Faculty’s creative, research and innovation activities. Each year, interest in these positions exceeds the capacity of the programmes: in 2025, the Faculty received 18 applications for Post-mag positions and 64 for Post-doc positions. To date, 16 people have taken part in the programmes, eight of whom studied at FFA BUT; at least six further positions are planned for the 2026/27 academic year.

The provision of courses for the public has changed substantially; in recent years, teaching staff, students and alumni have all taken part in shaping it. Previously it consisted of little more than evening drawing classes; today it covers a broad range of areas of contemporary art and design. Since 2021, the Faculty has further extended its engagement beyond the institution through cooperation with the Artotéka of the Moravian Gallery in Brno, among other initiatives, and through its own scheme for lending students’ artworks to the offices and public-facing spaces of the University and other institutions, which gives students practical experience of presenting their work outside the school environment.

One of the main priorities of the 2019–2025 period was to create support programmes and funding instruments for the academic community.⁹ These include more than ten types of annual funding competitions for various groups of students and staff, as well as residency programmes and a regular symposium connecting alumni with the Faculty. This reflected the conviction that initiatives of lasting value emerge from within the academic community itself, especially from students; the role of the Faculty leadership was to secure the resources and institutional support these initiatives needed, rather than to devise them itself. The weekly Faculty newsletter, published since 2020/21, also improved the flow of information across the academic community. Particular attention has been paid to supporting student initiatives and Faculty societies (Vegýna, Orgán, favu label, všuderajče, Bublina, slovem, screening 13 and others), whose activities have become a distinctive part of the Faculty’s culture, creative potential and public identity. Students also formed groups addressing the environmental dimensions of the Faculty’s operations and creative practice, including the Ekobuňka advisory group and Studio Matter, established in 2022 as a recycling workshop supporting sustainable artistic production.

The Faculty’s ability to care for its community was tested by exceptional crises – and at times these prompted us to rethink that care. During the pandemic, FFA BUT maintained teaching and gradually sought ways to move some educational and support activities online, even though art education and artistic practice are in large part tied to physical presence and to working together in the studio as a shared place. Focus groups nevertheless documented the costs of this transition: social isolation, greater time pressures, unequal access to technology and workspace, the difficulties first-year students faced in settling into the school, and effects on mental health. In response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the Faculty acted, and continues to act, not only through cultural and artistic activities but above all through concrete solidarity with and support for the country under attack and its people. In practice, this included collections of material aid, benefit auctions and the sale of artworks and books in the first weeks and months of the invasion, and later art workshops and a summer school for children, as well as invitations to Ukrainian artists to take up guest positions at the Faculty. This response has also included enhanced support for Ukrainian students, to whom the Faculty continues to provide educational, social and organisational assistance according to their individual needs.

Equality and social safety

Some of the changes remained outwardly invisible, even though it was precisely these that most profoundly reshaped the everyday experience of those studying and working at the Faculty. When appointing members to selection committees and advisory bodies, the Faculty took care to ensure a balanced representation of women and men¹⁰ and began consistently using gender-sensitive language in its documents and on its website. This was not merely a matter of words: after stagnating for years, women’s share of total academic staffing, measured in full-time equivalents (FTEs) rose from 21% to 38% over the period, and women accounted for nearly three-fifths of the net increase in academic FTEs.¹¹ The representation of women in the Faculty’s leadership and on its Artistic Board also changed markedly; whereas in 2018 there was only one woman in the Faculty’s leadership, women formed the majority after the new dean’s team took office,¹² and the share of women on the Artistic Board rose from 15% to almost 40%. Perceptions of equal professional opportunities at the Faculty are among the most positive across all BUT constituent units.¹³ Equality is also reflected in the remuneration of academic staff: the difference between the average salaries of women and men is negligible.¹⁴

Student representatives were added to Faculty bodies, including the study programme boards. The Faculty went further and actively sought their views beyond course evaluations, for example through focus groups, which informed, among other things, the preparation of accreditation applications and a new approach to the assessment of end-of-semester and degree projects. Building on these forms of participation, a more coherent framework for enhancing the quality of education is now in preparation. It is to bring together the existing feedback mechanisms, make consistent use of their findings, and better reflect the specific nature of studio teaching.

The practical conditions for study also changed: in 2019, the Faculty began allowing students to use the studios free of charge during the summer holidays and introduced intensive work weeks with round-the-clock access to Faculty facilities during the completion of end-of-semester and degree projects. Adapted study arrangements and individual study plans became routine, responding to students’ varied circumstances – whether related to specific needs, to combining study with raising children, or to other situations calling for a tailored approach. Further changes included incorporating work placements into the curriculum, establishing scholarships for students facing difficult circumstances, and making the Faculty budget, including ongoing expenditure against it, accessible to the entire academic community.

In March 2022, FFA BUT established the office of an independent Faculty ombudsperson, becoming a pioneer within the University in social safety – understood here as a safe and respectful environment for study and work. More than a year of preparation preceded its creation, including an external survey mapping the Faculty’s study and working environment with regard to the specific nature of art education. The ombudsperson and their secretary record approximately forty requests for assistance from students and staff each year. Most cases are resolved informally or through mediation; the preventive dimension of the office’s work includes peer supervision sessions held within individual studios. Social safety has also been incorporated into teaching and counselling: since the academic year 2021/22, the curriculum has included a compulsory interactive workshop on the prevention of inappropriate behaviour, on mutual respect and open communication, and on seeking help early, complemented by counselling for students and published procedures for raising and addressing concerns.

Reports on the ombudsperson’s activities also show that establishing the office alone does not guarantee social safety. They repeatedly record misunderstandings in communication, inappropriate comments, doubts about the fairness of assessment and situations perceived as abuses of power; in isolated cases, they also confirm breaches of the rules. The effectiveness of the office therefore cannot be judged by a low or declining number of concerns raised, but by whether it enables problems to be identified and addressed promptly and the resulting experience to be used in prevention.

People and working conditions

The Faculty’s workforce expanded appreciably: total staffing increased from 61.7 FTEs in 2019 to 93.3 FTEs in 2025, a rise of more than 50%. Growth in academic FTEs outpaced growth in student numbers,¹⁵ strengthening the conditions for individual supervision and support – in contrast to most comparable art faculties and academies. Above all, teaching provision in individual studios was increased from 1.5 to 2 FTEs, the level customary at fine-art universities and faculties. For those holding the second teaching post in each studio, this brought an end to a precarious position in which part-time appointments had not matched the actual scope of their teaching work. More teaching staff were also added to the departments, and the Dean’s Office and workshop teams expanded as well. The improved ratio of students to academic FTEs did not, however, translate evenly into workloads. The workload remained heaviest among teaching staff with a habilitation (associate professors and professors): the number of doctoral projects grew faster than the number of people eligible to supervise them, so dissertation supervision continued to fall to the same individuals.

Since the academic year 2020/21, the Faculty has been systematically strengthening its teachers’ expertise and teaching skills, and cultivating the culture of its academic environment. A programme supporting the development of the professional and pedagogical competences of academic staff and doctoral candidates was established, and the Faculty began a tradition of four-day residential summer schools for teaching staff. These provide a facilitated space for reflecting on pedagogy, sharing good practice and engaging in interdisciplinary discussion of current issues in art education. At these summer schools, staff jointly explore how to handle challenging pedagogical situations, where to draw the boundaries between professional roles, and how to improve teaching and its institutional infrastructure. The programme of each summer school is based on suggestions from the teaching community and combines professional development, community-building and informal interaction; the provision of childcare also makes it easier for staff with young children to participate.

Stronger staffing, more systematic administrative support, the digitisation of administrative processes and the introduction of new organisational procedures translated into a marked increase in the Faculty’s performance: above all, the number of points awarded for outputs reported in the Register of Artistic Outputs (RUV) grew by more than 160%.¹⁶ The expansion of doctoral studies contributed significantly to this increase, as doctoral research accounted for an important share of the reported outputs. Improvements in administrative support also played a role, since the Faculty developed the capacity to record and report outputs systematically only during the period under review. The higher reported volume therefore cannot automatically be treated as evidence of more intensive creative activity. Independent evidence of the quality of that work is better sought in the nominations and awards received by the Faculty’s students, graduates and teaching staff in competitions across the field, from the Jindřich Chalupecký Award to Czech Grand Design. Staff incentives and working conditions also contributed to the quantity and quality of the outputs reported. These include, in particular, incentive bonuses for certified RUV and RIV results or for securing research grants. They are complemented by the International Mobility Support Fund, an open-access publishing programme for the results of scientific and artistic research, and the regularly used option of taking sabbatical leave.

In 2025, FFA BUT recorded the highest average salary for academic staff among the art faculties and academies in the Czech Republic. This marked a turnaround from 2019, when academic salaries at the Faculty were below the sector average.¹⁷ This turnaround formed part of a broader correction of working conditions that had begun with regularising appointments in the studios. Pay for technical and administrative staff followed a similar trajectory: a 77% increase moved the Faculty from last place among all eight BUT faculties in 2019 to second place.

These indicators, however, capture only the measurable part of what mattered most to the Faculty: good conditions for study and work. Some insight into these conditions is offered by the 2025 staff survey. Its overall tenor is favourable, but its more reserved ratings of internal communication and organisational culture are a reminder that a stronger institutional base does not, of itself, translate into a sense of belonging.¹⁸ The communication style of the current leadership may also have played a part: it was characterised by restraint and by an effort to place as few demands as possible on the academic community. It relied above all on individual availability and direct personal contact; yet such proximity does not in itself create a sense of belonging across the whole community, which also needs regular occasions to come together – occasions the Faculty has begun to develop more systematically only in recent years, for example through the residential summer schools for teaching staff. What we understood as consideration for others’ time and focus may have been perceived by some at the Faculty as distance.

Finance and infrastructure

The Faculty’s total annual revenues grew to 2.7 times their 2019 level over the period,¹⁹ and the annual volume of scholarships supporting students more than tripled.²⁰ This growth was not only a matter of overall volume: within the performance-based component of the contribution for educational activities (indicator K), which BUT distributes among its faculties and other units according to quality indicators, FFA BUT increased its share from 7.3% in 2019 to 13.1% in 2025. The Faculty maintained a balanced budget or recorded a modest surplus throughout the period, and its fund balances increased by 173%;²¹ this created a reserve to supplement funding for the adaptation and internal fit-out²² of premises on the BUT campus on Údolní Street, currently undergoing reconstruction, where the Faculty will consolidate its facilities and activities once the building work is finished.

In cooperation with the BUT Rectorate, the planning phase of the reconstruction was completed and construction is now under way, with the work due for completion in 2027.²³ The Faculty also secured major infrastructure grants, which enabled it to furnish its departments and specialised facilities with modern instruments and equipment. Until the reconstruction is complete, however, the split across interim sites remains an operational risk: the Faculty is maintaining teaching and operations there in full, at the cost of greater organisational demands and reduced day-to-day contact between studios. The Faculty has ensured barrier-free access through ad hoc arrangements since the beginning of the period under review; a definitive solution will come only with the reconstruction. Any delay to the construction timetable would mean managing both the split across interim sites and the ad hoc accessibility arrangements for longer than anticipated.

Knowledge sharing and internationalisation

The Faculty’s public role encompassed widening access to art and lifelong learning, working with cultural and public institutions, and sharing knowledge beyond its walls. In recent years, the sharing of research findings and their communication to specialist and wider audiences gained firmer foundations. The Faculty became a partner institution of the Society for Artistic Research, launched its own FFA Research Catalogue Portal and established the online journal FFA Research in Art and Design. An important step was placing the Faculty’s publishing activities on a firm institutional footing and establishing the Editorial Board as a standing advisory body responsible for quality, coordination and the annual publishing plan. FFA Press is now an established publishing imprint.²⁴ It publishes peer-reviewed monographs on the history and theory of art, design and architecture, publications presenting artistic and design research, artists’ books, experimental student publications, and sound recordings, both independently and in co-editions with Czech and international partners. The 2024 evaluation praised the breadth of the publishing programme and the international reach of its English-language titles; as a next step, it recommended partnerships with international publishers offering global distribution.

The internationalisation of the Faculty’s environment has deepened, above all through the establishment of the Visiting Artists’ Studio, which has been expanding international pedagogical and creative exchange since 2019. The Studio has no permanent academic head – each semester, at the Faculty’s invitation, it is led by a different prominent figure or collective. To date, its successive leaders have been Przemysław Kwiek, Karol Radziszewski, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Antye Greie-Ripatti (AGF), Zuzanna Czebatul, Zeyno Pekünlü, Yaryna Shumska, Alma Leora Culén, the duo MSHR (Brenna Murphy and Birch Cooper), Ernst Yohji Jaeger, Julischka Stengele, Rebecca Salvadori, Thomas Helbig and Zuza Golińska. The Studio facilitates contact with international art and design practice, while also serving as a forum for students from different studios and degree levels. During the semester, students also have the opportunity to follow the current work of the visiting artist or collective, visit their exhibitions and studios abroad, and gain insight into how the art world operates outside the Czech context. The extent of the visiting artists’ involvement – public lectures, teaching and individual consultations on doctoral projects – was described by the 2024 evaluation as exceptional and as evidence of the quality of the Faculty’s research environment.

Not everything went equally well, however: although student numbers grew in recent years, international student mobility did not keep pace with this growth,²⁵ and this was not solely due to pandemic restrictions. By 2025, total mobility had almost returned to its 2019 level, yet in per-enrolment terms it had in fact fallen by roughly a third. Moreover, outgoing mobility exceeded its starting level only thanks to substantial supplementary funding from the Faculty budget, while incoming mobility remained well below it; the overall recovery cannot therefore yet be considered sustainable. The untapped potential of international student exchange thus remains one of the challenges requiring sustained attention in the period ahead.

Persistent challenges

FFA BUT enters the new strategic period 2026–2030 as a stabilised art faculty with a distinct research profile. At the same time, it remains mindful of several persistent challenges: these concern the previously mentioned student mobility, the forms and funding of research and the dissemination of its results, doctoral studies and shared teaching, closer integration within the University, and the Faculty’s institutional memory.

External evaluations repeatedly identified two areas. The first concerns more intensive participation in European research funding schemes; the second, the creation of a stable framework for cooperation with external partners in contract and applied research, including the use of the Faculty’s research infrastructure. Both areas had already been identified by the EQ-Arts evaluation conducted in autumn 2019. If the same recommendations recur five years later, this is not a temporary deficit but a structural weakness.

A comparison of the 2019–2023 financial indicators presented in the Module 3 self-evaluation reports submitted to the IEP shows that, while the Faculty was among the stronger performers in the sector for contract research and non-public funding, it remained well below the sector average for the volume of projects awarded in public competitions. The development of contract and applied research should not, however, be reduced to commissioned production: projects based on critical research and long-term collaboration remain the priority. Yet these can rarely be pursued without funding from public grant schemes.²⁶

One of the ways in which the Faculty intends to develop its cooperation with external partners is by creating the conditions for the first spin-off companies and start-ups to emerge from its own creative practice and research. In the context of an art school, however, this is neither a given nor the only model: the emphasis in the field is shifting from knowledge transfer, the one-way delivery of completed outputs, towards knowledge exchange, a broader process based on reciprocal sharing and the co-production of insights, methods and creative practices. Such exchange may take the form of long-term partnerships with cultural and public institutions, collaborative research, or the shared use of expertise and infrastructure. Within this broader framework, the Faculty needs to clarify which outputs or activities might provide the basis for an independent entity, what values such a step must not compromise, and where publicly funded support ends and private enterprise begins. It also remains an open question whether spin-off companies and start-ups meet a need recognised within the Faculty, or whether they feature in its plans primarily as an instrument adopted from innovation policy. They should therefore be presented not as a ready-made solution, but as one of several options whose purpose and conditions the Faculty has yet to examine.

Applied research also needs a broader staffing base. Project implementation during the period under review depended on a narrow group of two or three individuals; the long-term sustainability of these activities presupposes wider involvement across the Faculty.²⁷ The Faculty is therefore currently completing a mapping exercise covering its research capacities and thematic areas.²⁸ This also responds to the recommendations of the 2024 evaluation, which assessed research and creative activities and doctoral studies and called on the Faculty to define its key research areas more precisely and communicate them more clearly.

Although forms of presentation and dissemination that reflect the specific nature of the field remain fundamental to FFA BUT,²⁹ publishing in journals indexed in bibliometric databases also calls for a more systematic approach within the university context. Articles in journals with an impact factor (classified as Jimp outputs under the Czech RD&I evaluation methodology) have so far appeared only occasionally, although some have been published in titles ranked in the top decile according to Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Such articles not only count towards the evaluation and funding of research at Czech higher education institutions but, above all, broaden the range of the Faculty’s scholarly outputs, extend the international reach of its research and bring its findings, through peer review, into wider scholarly debate.

The sustainability of doctoral studies remains an issue in its own right. The 2024 evaluation devoted a separate report to the programme. It praised the quality of its supervisors; the carefully designed structure of the studies, which creates conditions for doctoral candidates to share their research with one another; the involvement of international visiting teachers and resident artists in consultations on doctoral projects; the publishing infrastructure supporting the publication of artistic research expositions; and a range of instruments for funding such research. Although the evaluation found that the programme fully meets international standards for doctoral education, such as the Salzburg Principles and the Florence Principles on the Doctorate in the Arts, it also recommended developing team-based dissertation supervision more consistently, clarifying the framework for the pedagogical training of doctoral candidates, providing administrative support for the forthcoming English-language version of the programme, and protecting supervisors’ time from further demands. The newly accredited doctoral programme, delivered since January 2025, has created the conditions for most of these measures; whether they take effect, however, will depend on how they are implemented and on stable funding for early-stage research careers.

The Faculty still owes itself one important thing that would make looking back on its own history easier: the systematic preservation and accessibility of the works and projects created during study, or of their documentation. Despite several attempts, no consistent and sustainable solution for this element of its institutional memory has yet been established. Individual studios and the Department of Audiovisual Technology archive this work in an uncoordinated way, the resulting records are scattered across unconnected locations, and older documentation is gradually becoming impossible to trace. A shared digital repository with a consistent structure, defined file formats and basic metadata would facilitate both the management of documentation and the Faculty’s public presentation. It would also lay the foundations for a library of projects in which students could become acquainted with the work of their predecessors. The Faculty intends to select the final form of the repository in 2026.

A further challenge is the development of shared teaching across faculties and universities,³⁰ which the Faculty has pursued in recent years – both at the level of individual courses, for example in cooperation with BUT’s Faculty of Information Technology or the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University, and at the level of entire degree programmes, for example in doctoral studies with the Institute of Machine and Industrial Design at BUT’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. The aim is to embed these forms of cooperation in long-term partnerships that will deepen interdisciplinarity and strengthen the Faculty’s capacity to respond effectively to changes in art education and research.

A particular opportunity – so far only partially realised – arises from the position of an art faculty within a technical university in relation to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, generative media and advanced digital fabrication. The Faculty can not only work with them creatively but also critically examine their ethical and societal implications. It cannot, however, realise this potential on its own. Both external assessments – BUT’s 2024 evaluation and the 2025 IEP assessment – recommended that the University as a whole embrace the international shift from STEM to STEAM, a conception of education that connects the natural sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics with the arts (and, in its broader interpretation, the humanities), and that it systematically strengthen the Faculty’s links with the University’s other constituent units.

Profile and openness

Thirty-three years after its foundation,³¹ FFA BUT should base its further development primarily on improving the quality of education and the conditions in which it takes place, rather than on expanding its portfolio of degree programmes. The growth in student numbers to date has not been an end in itself, but a means of stabilising the Faculty and the structure of its student body; with the sustainable capacity estimated earlier now effectively reached,³² this phase is coming to a close. The recent reaccreditation process, to which the academic community contributed, secured the Faculty’s educational framework for a period extending beyond 2030.³³ The priority for the coming years is therefore to review existing curricula on an ongoing basis while preserving the Faculty’s profile. FFA BUT is to remain a faculty of fine arts not only in name but also in the character of its education – a distinctive alternative to traditional art academies. This means avoiding massification and keeping the Faculty’s centre of gravity in fine art, alongside which design has its own fully fledged place.

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A stabilised capacity and a clear profile must not mean becoming less open. Openness should characterise both entry to the Faculty and study within it: it requires a fair and predictable admissions process, equal access to information, the removal of unnecessary barriers for applicants, and as much movement between degree programmes as their distinct orientations allow. In this way, the Faculty can continue to function as one school.

Openness, however, cannot be confined to admissions and study; it should also shape the way the Faculty forms and renews its teaching teams. Studios form the core of art education, their teachers play a central role in admissions, and the Faculty’s degree programmes prepare students above all for independent artistic and design practice. Studio teaching therefore depends on teachers maintaining an active creative practice that engages with current questions in their fields. At the same time, the Faculty needs to review regularly whether the direction of each studio responds to developments in the field and the needs of students; nor can the Faculty’s current appeal to applicants be taken for granted. Open competitions for studio leadership positions are one instrument of that review. Teaching can also benefit from new approaches and experience when teachers spend a period in another studio or when the composition of teaching pairs changes for a time within the Faculty. These competitions must be held at predictable intervals and governed by fair rules, so that they do not become a source of undue employment insecurity. Where a competition resulted in a change in a studio’s leadership, the Faculty sought another role in the curriculum for the teachers concerned, so that their long-standing knowledge of the field and its craft remained at least partly available to students, and the teaching staff retained its generational diversity. That diversity brings with it not only different perspectives on the art world and its workings, but also a lived memory of the field, and the importance of that memory only grows in unsettled times. Continuity has institutional value, but it must not allow studios to harden into fixed authorial territories.

The institution as everyday practice

Growth and institutionalisation also come at a cost: the sense of belonging that once developed naturally within a small faculty through direct contact and personal ties must now be consciously cultivated. Institutionalisation makes sense only if it does not replace these relationships but puts them on a firmer footing. Similar tensions ran throughout the period: between care for conditions and demands for performance, between inclusion and selectivity, between maintaining a critical distance from metrics and the need to use them to demonstrate legitimacy,³⁴ and between openness and the safety of the community. Such tensions are inherent in an art institution; they cannot be resolved once and for all, only rebalanced again and again.

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What will endure from these years is not so much annual reports, tables and numbers as the habits, relationships³⁵ and standards that the academic community has made its own; it is these that will determine where the Faculty moves next. One such standard is the insistence on space to express views and take a stand – a principle that should itself be part of the Faculty’s institutional culture. The test of this period will not be what the current leadership leaves behind, but what the Faculty can sustain even without it. Neither trust nor openness is a state; each is a practice that must be renewed every day.

Analyses and Charts

Comparisons and trend charts

Most charts compare FFA BUT with the other institutions in the sector of 14 public art universities and faculties; items XII to XVI concern developments at FFA BUT and within BUT. The time series generally begin with the first year for which the necessary data can be compiled from publicly available sources. Moreover, a comparison of the full sector is possible only from 2013, when the youngest art faculty in the Czech Republic, FDU ZČU, was founded. Reference periods vary with the methodology of each source; the relevant note states the period used in each case.

1. Comparison of artistic performance across art faculties and academies
2. Comparison of admissions selectivity across art faculties and academies
3. Comparison of admissions selectivity across Czech HEIs (2023/24)
4. Comparison of percentage changes in application numbers across art faculties and academies
5. Comparison of student numbers across art faculties and academies
6. Comparison of academic staff numbers across art faculties and academies
7. Comparison of student numbers per academic FTE across art faculties and academies
8. Comparison of average academic staff salaries across art faculties and academies
9. Comparison of percentage changes in academic staff salaries across art faculties and academies
10. Comparison of doctoral student numbers across art faculties and academies
11. Comparison of dissertation supervision success rates across art faculties and academies
12. Trend in the average salary of FFA BUT employees (2019–2025)
13. Trends in average salaries across BUT faculties (2019–2025)
14. Selected trends at FFA BUT (percentage change relative to 2013)
15. Admissions statistics for FFA BUT (since 2013)
16. Doctoral studies statistics for FFA BUT

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The Faculty in figures

Abbreviations: FTE – full-time equivalent; m – million; pp – percentage points; Ø – average.

Notes: The baseline year is 2019 unless otherwise indicated. The ↑ symbol links to the relevant passage in the text. Student numbers exclude interrupted studies. Selectivity is calculated as the number of applicants admitted as a proportion of those who took part in the admissions procedure; a lower figure indicates greater selectivity; the calculation covers Bachelor’s and long-cycle Master’s programmes and includes Czech citizens only. The student-to-academic-FTE ratio excludes doctoral students. Mobility is defined as the sum of incoming and outgoing student mobility days; the recalculated number of study enrolments recorded in the student register (277 in 2019 and 360 in 2025) is used as the denominator for the per-enrolment figure. Salary and financial figures are nominal; cumulative inflation between 2019 and 2025 was approximately 43%.

Foundations

The Foundations set out the Faculty’s mission, vision and context, on which the FFA BUT Strategic Plan for 2026–2030 builds. Unlike the retrospective Looking Back on 2019–2025, these are programmatic statements.

Mission

The mission of FFA BUT is to be a vibrant, open and inclusive space for the development of talent, in which critical thinking, freedom of expression and responsibility form the foundation of academic identity. As an art faculty grounded in liberal values, we see art and design as distinctive ways of knowing and as vital means of reflecting on, interpreting and shaping the world, of articulating personal and universal values, and of creating tools that support the prosperity and resilience of human communities and of the more-than-human natural world.

FFA BUT provides education across all three cycles of higher education – in Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes in fine art and design and in a doctoral programme focused on research in art and design. In developing its degree programmes, the Faculty will further strengthen the international dimension of education, in particular by expanding English-taught provision, widening its network of international partnerships, promoting the mutual recognition of studies and diplomas, and supporting the mobility of students and staff.

The educational mission of FFA BUT rests on the conviction that art and design are of fundamental importance to society, while also being fields supported by established professional networks and structures, and offering genuine career prospects. The Faculty therefore shapes and continually updates its curriculum so that graduates acquire up-to-date knowledge and competences, develop a clear sense of professional direction and a commitment to continued development, and ground their future practice in shared values and ethical standards. At the same time, we emphasise the role of art and design as autonomous forms of knowledge and contribute to the ongoing development of the field of artistic research.

In its creative and research activities, the Faculty’s long-term priority is to provide a stable and stimulating environment in which outstanding work in art, design and related areas of research can emerge. The Faculty supports projects that generate new knowledge and hold their own in national and international contexts, thereby strengthening its position as a centre of forward-looking creative practice, critical thinking and innovative approaches. We will develop the Faculty’s research role while preserving the distinctive character of an art school in which scholarly research meets and intertwines with artistic research, as well as with living creative and educational practice.

It is through this interconnection of education, research and artistic practice, together with responsible engagement with society, that the distinctive character of FFA BUT takes shape. The Faculty will strive not only for artistic and scholarly excellence, but also for the engagement and critical awareness that allow the very notion of excellence to be continually re-examined and revised. In this openness to the challenges of the present, we see the Faculty’s vital role within the technical university, the local community and society as a whole.

Vision

The vision of FFA BUT is to be an assured and internationally sought-after art institution that, within the ecosystem of a technical university, creates a distinctive space where art and design meet technology, science and social reflection. We want to be a place where academic excellence is constantly renewed through dialogue with contemporary creative practice, and where artistic research offers insights that help us understand and address global societal, technological and environmental challenges. We are working towards a faculty that is an integral part of the European Higher Education Area, attracts talented people from around the world and provides them with the conditions to develop freely in an inclusive environment based on mutual respect.

We see FFA BUT as a recognised centre of creativity, knowledge and imagination – as an institution whose students and staff aspire not only to reflect on the world but to take an active and critical part in cultivating it, and as an open platform for imagining, debating and shaping the world of tomorrow.

Context

FFA BUT is the oldest art faculty in the Czech Republic to form part of a university that does not specialise in the arts. It was founded in 1993 as the very first of the art faculties established outside the traditional centres of Czech art education, in part as a counterweight to educational and cultural centralism. The tradition of art education at the technical university in Brno, however, goes back much further. As early as 1899, an Institute of Drawing was founded here, associated with such major figures of Czech fine art as Hanuš Schwaiger, Felix Jenewein, Josef Šíma, Jaroslav Král and Vincenc Makovský. It was the post-war work of Vincenc Makovský that opened a new chapter in art education on Rybářská Street in Old Brno, where the Faculty was based from its founding until November 2016. Today the Faculty is based in the historic buildings of the BUT campus on Údolní Street in Brno. As a modern art faculty of a public technical university, it brings together art, design, research and social responsibility. Over its more than thirty-year history, FFA BUT has established itself as one of the key institutions of higher education in fine art and design and, alongside the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, has ranked among the most selective schools in the Czech Republic since 2021.