ABOUT

NEIGH­BORS AND THE VIS­I­TOR COM­MU­NI­TY SAVED KASÁR­NA KARLÍN

8060 CZK. THAT’S THE AMOUNT RAISED BY SIXTH-GRADE STU­DENTS FROM ZŠ LYČKO­VA ON MAY 22 DUR­ING THEIR SCHOOL FAIR AND DONAT­ED TO KASÁR­NA KAR­LÍN WITH A WISH THAT IT WILL REOPEN AS SOON AS POS­SI­BLE. ​“THE KIDS FROM PERN­ER­KA BROUGHT ME A GIFT VOUCH­ER FOR THE MON­EY THEY HAD EARNED AT THE SCHOOL FAIR AND WANT­ED TO TAKE A GROUP PHO­TO ON THE PLAY­GROUND WHERE, NEAR­LY EIGHT YEARS AGO, THEY START­ED COM­ING AS LIT­TLE TOD­DLERS. THEY WERE SAD THAT THEY COULDN’T COME HERE AS USU­AL. I TOLD THEM THAT VERY SOON THEY’D BE ABLE TO RUN WILD HERE JUST LIKE THEY USED TO. IT WAS SO POW­ER­FUL THAT I COULD HARD­LY SPEAK. I WISH YOU COULD HAVE SEEN AND HEARD THEM. I CAN’T EVEN DESCRIBE THEIR JOY… AND THAT’S WHY I’M ACTU­AL­LY GLAD I COULDN’T KEEP THE SECRET AND TOLD THEM FIRST THAT WE’RE REOPEN­ING NEXT WEEK.” — MATĚJ VELEK

It’s been almost a year since the gates of Kasár­na Kar­lín closed and vis­i­tors stopped com­ing — our neigh­bors, fam­i­lies with chil­dren, cul­ture lovers, and tourists who want­ed to tick off a renowned loca­tion on the Prague map.

Since clos­ing, we’ve done every­thing in our pow­er to be giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to reopen Kasár­na to the pub­lic. And even though it hasn’t always been easy, we’ve had the incred­i­ble strength of the local neigh­bor­hood and the entire com­mu­ni­ty of sup­port­ers behind us the whole time. Reg­u­lar or one-time finan­cial dona­tions, orga­niz­ing and attend­ing ral­lies for the reopen­ing, let­ters to offi­cials and politi­cians — these are just some of the ways our neigh­bors chose to sup­port us. To sup­port a place where you can calm­ly sit with your fam­i­ly under the trees with a cof­fee, beer, wine, lemon­ade, or a hot dog with­out it cost­ing your whole pay­check and with­out hav­ing to wor­ry that your kids might be hurt by the first reck­less driver.

Words aren’t enough to express how deeply we appre­ci­ate these actions. Thanks to them, we’ve felt a great sense of sol­i­dar­i­ty with our space all year long — and we’ve con­firmed that Kasár­na is real­ly about the peo­ple who cre­ate the right atmos­phere and a cul­tur­al oasis in the mid­dle of the city togeth­er with us, and who won’t leave us behind even in tough times. And it doesn’t mat­ter whether the sup­port was active, for­mal, infor­mal, or per­haps just silent — in the form of a long sigh. You all cre­at­ed the incred­i­ble ener­gy we’ve been draw­ing from.

Besides indi­vid­u­als, a school from Kar­lín also stood up for us. The school’s lead­er­ship wrote let­ters and emails appeal­ing to the rel­e­vant author­i­ties not to delay deci­sions, so the chil­dren could return to the sand­box and jun­gle gym as soon as possible.

We our­selves pro­posed many com­pro­mise solu­tions, even if it meant lim­it­ing some of our for­mer activ­i­ties and future plans. Every­thing the author­i­ties point­ed out as prob­lem­at­ic or ques­tion­able regard­ing our oper­a­tions, we active­ly addressed accord­ing to their require­ments and recommendations.

You may remem­ber that the site was closed fol­low­ing a com­plaint point­ing out the oper­a­tion of a cul­tur­al cen­ter being in con­flict with the zon­ing plan and jus­ti­fy­ing the attempt to shut us down by cit­ing exces­sive noise. Dur­ing the dis­cus­sions of all pro­posed mea­sures, it became clear that the com­plainant wasn’t real­ly inter­est­ed in the noise or night­time peace — but in our per­ma­nent clo­sure. He refused to engage with us at all. That’s also why every­thing took so long — the com­plainant used vir­tu­al­ly every pos­si­ble tool to delay the reopen­ing of Kasár­na Karlín.

Once the entire prop­er­ty was trans­ferred to city own­er­ship, the city hall launched an ini­tia­tive to make the site as wide­ly usable as pos­si­ble. We’ve been nego­ti­at­ing with the city from the very begin­ning, and we’re con­vinced that we share many of the same ideas about devel­op­ing Karlín’s Kasár­na. We’d like to thank the coun­cilors and rep­re­sen­ta­tives who took a very con­struc­tive approach to approv­ing the new zon­ing plan, thus essen­tial­ly giv­ing the green light to the re-approval process of the site. The zon­ing plan change allowed us to begin tem­po­rary oper­a­tions in the courtyard.

The com­bined effort of many peo­ple has brought results, and even though the wait felt end­less, we bring you good news: Kasár­na Kar­lín will restart its oper­a­tions on Tues­day, may 27. For now, it’ll oper­ate in a pro­vi­sion­al régime — with refresh­ment tents and court­yard toi­lets — but hope­ful­ly, even that will change soon. Once all admin­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures are com­plete, we hope to final­ly return indoors and grad­u­al­ly to full oper­a­tion — serv­ing spe­cial­ty cof­fee, craft beer, screen­ing great films, and orga­niz­ing con­certs and oth­er com­mu­ni­ty events.

At the end, we’d like to ask one thing of you.

Due to the con­di­tion of the old build­ing, part of the area is fenced off and it’s not pos­si­ble to access the space via the side­walk as you were used to. Please respect the traf­fic sig­nage — the entrance remains in the same place. We’ll soon pub­lish a nav­i­ga­tion map on our web­site and social media that will safe­ly guide you into the space. We kind­ly ask you to respect all safe­ty mea­sures installed by the man­age­ment com­pa­ny TCP, and not to run across the road in front of the entrance — for your own safety.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUP­PORT — AND WE’RE ALREADY LOOK­ING FOR­WARD TO YOUR VISIT!

“In five years, we’ve built a unique place that offers con­certs, a cin­e­ma, a styl­ish café, and even beach vol­ley­ball. We are a cul­tur­al oasis for every­one.” — Matěj Velek, one of the man­agers of Kasár­na Kar­lín, in an inter­view for full​moonzine​.cz, June 2022.

What to learn more about Kasár­na? Feel free to stroll through the court­yard exhi­bi­tion with a drink in hand. It cap­tures the his­to­ry of the site, vet­er­ans’ mem­o­ries, as well as cur­rent oper­a­tions and future plans.

V MÉDIÍCH—
 

Aktuálně.cz— Kasár­na Kar­lín se za pět let změni­la k nepoznání. Z armád­ního bazénu je kavárna

ČRo Vlta­va— Kasár­na Kar­lín jsou speci­fická tím, že je tam všechno

ČRo Vlta­va— Netradiční mís­ta pro kulturu