Chairholder: Prof. JUDr. Vinoš Sofka, Ph.D. h.c.
Kamenice
3, 625 00 Brno
tel.:
++420–5–42 128 372, fax: ++420–5–42 128 396
The results of deliberations and the work of the UNESCO Chair during the year 1999 created a positive atmosphere for optimistic entry in the year 2000. Organizational measures and the reinforcement of the position of the Chair, according the decision of the leadership of Masaryk University, the continued professional interest for the International Summer School of Museology (ISSOM) and the Chair’s Transition Project aimed at assistance to post-communist and post-totalitarian countries, encouraged this view. The recognition of the work of the Chair and the promise of full support to its activities made by the Head of the Sector of Culture of UNESCO in Paris, also led to optimism at the end of 1999.
The new year brought, however, with the new Director General of UNESCO also new approaches to the proposals submitted by the Chair. Vitally important applications for support from the UNESCO Participation Programme for the realization of the work plan of the Chair came to an end by applying the principle that developed countries (the Czech Republic included) must cover projects from their own resources. The request to the Open Society Fund Prague for financial support from its East East Programme to the applicants (12) to ISSOM 2000, forwarded to the Open Society Institute in Budapest with reference to its Summer Schools Programme, became fruitless when it was shown that this programme is open explicitly for young university teachers and thus not applicable for museum workers and museology. Moreover, the principle of self-financing at the university rendered impossible internal support and the course had to be cancelled.
However, a favorable decision of the request for support from the fund for educational activities of the Minister of Education in August 2000 allowed the Chair to continue its action, participate at some important international events and organize at the close of the year the first gathering of its collaborating institutions and experts, which it had strived for since the establishment of the Chair in the year 1994.
In January 2000 the Chairholder attended the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust in Stockholm. He compiled briefing material of the media coverage of this meeting for the Office of the President of the Czech Republic and personal information to President Václav Havel who attended the Conference in Sweden.
In the Czech Republic, the Chairholder participated actively in May at the Fifth Fair of Czech Museums in Trebic, and at the Annual Meeting of the Central European National Committees of ICOM (CEICOM) in October 2000 in Prague.
During the year, the Chairholder was invited to two sessions of the Forum UNESCO – University and Heritage. Regional European Seminar Training in heritage: new skills and professional profiles took place in June in Vicenza – Italy, and the Fifth International Seminar of the Forum on the topic A living heritage: the shared ethical responsibilities of universities in December in Byblos and Beirut – Lebanon. Especially there, in the country slowly recovering from a long war, the Brno Transition Project From Oppression to Democracy and the announced establishment of its International Movement for Democratic Transformation waked great interest.
Several meetings with important representatives of museology, universities and institutions in the field of heritage were held abroad in connection with the above activities, as well as in the Czech Republic and in Sweden. In collaboration with the Dutch Felix Meritis Foundation, and paid by the foundation, the Chair received Alexandra Chistyakova, Curator of the Krasnoyarsk Museum Center in the Russian Federation, for apprenticeship during the period from 22 November to 27 December 2000. Her stay was an important expression of strengthening the collaboration between the Chair and heritage institutions in Siberia and in the Russian Far East.
Undoubtedly most important activity of the year was the organization of the Annual Meeting of the ICOM International Committee for Museology (ICOFOM) in Munich (26-30 November) and in Brno (1-5 December). Co-organizer with the Chair was the Munich Museum-Pedagogical Center, which is also the partner of the Chair in its Programme. The topics of the joined symposia were, in Munich, Museology and the intangible heritage, and in Brno, The intangible heritage in transitional societies. This meeting was immediately followed in Brno by The First Transition Project Workshop (5-8 December).
These Brno activities have an historical significance. It was the first time the Chair succeeded to connect the international museology committee which includes the foremost experts representing all continents, with a group of representatives of important institutions in the Russian Federation (from Moscow through the Urals all the way to Kamchatka), plus Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Sweden, the Czech Republic and also Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and the USA, who have already collaborated for several years with the UNESCO Chair in Brno. In a very open and friendly exchange of views and experience, the participants stated the need for urgent realization of the Transition Project, based at and co-ordinated by the Chair, in countries undergoing post-totalitarian processes of difficult transformation on the way to democracy, tolerance and the respect for human rights.
The result of the meeting and workshop was the establishment of the Transition Project.
From Oppression to Democracy as an international movement of institutions and workers in the field of heritage with the aim to support the process of democratic transformation in the world. This movement is co-ordinated by the UNESCO Chair of Museology and World
Heritage in Brno in the framework of its international network.