Debate League

The goal of the Debate League project at Kunsthalle Praha is to cultivate discussion about art in our society. Through this project, we create an open platform for high school students, helping them not only gain experience in debating but also navigate various topics more or less related to art. Debate as an organized exchange of opinions develops critical thinking, argumentation skills, media literacy, and presentation abilities in students.  

The project is conducted in collaboration with the nonprofit Association of Debate Clubs, which is part of an international debate program and has many years of experience in organizing debate competitions and training debate enthusiasts.  

During the first meeting, students and teachers are trained in the rules of debating and introduced to the debate thesis related to current exhibitions at Kunsthalle Praha. They also have the opportunity to ask questions and engage in informal discussion, which can help them prepare for debating the theses. Between the first meeting and the final day, students gather information and materials for debating through self-study or at school and prepare for the final debate day in the gallery. In the final debates, teams duel to defend or refute the validity of the given thesis. At the end of the debates, a qualified instructor from the Association of Debate Clubs provides feedback on the debating skills of the participants, and together with an invited artist or educator, students can further develop the discussion on the given topic. 

The discussed theses are deliberately controversial. Students should consider the theses either through self-study or under the guidance of a teacher at school, gathering information that will help them obtain relevant materials for later debating. 

Physics in the Gallery

Under the wings of the first exhibition project "Kinetismus: 100 Years of Electricity in Art," we focused on a project that connected two seemingly incompatible educational subjects: physics and art education.  

The exhibition encouraged the exploration and understanding of the connections between scientific knowledge in the fields of kinetics, optics, and magnetism, and the development of art in the second half of the 20th century. We created a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue to engage students and teachers who do not always have the opportunity to connect these subjects. By integrating these fields, they can seek a more comprehensive view of selected topics such as artificial intelligence, interactivity, computer art, and more. 

We collaborated with two Prague high schools - Jan Neruda Grammar School and Archbishop Grammar School. Students and teachers, along with Kunsthalle lecturers, first explored the exhibition from the perspective of art development and through the lens of scientific discoveries in physics. They were then encouraged to engage in their own creative work. They consulted their ideas with physics and art teachers and created their own light-kinetic works in the form of objects, films, photographs, or computer applications. In the end, students from both grammar schools met at Kunsthalle to present, discuss, and evaluate their work together. 

We thank all the participating students for their excellent realizations and dedication, as well as for their stimulating collaboration with the teachers, especially Simona Svatošová and Jindřich Koubek (Jan Neruda Grammar School), Martina Peterková, and Marcela Grecová (Archbishop Grammar School).