The grant programme to revitalize public spaces

The City of Ostrava’s grant programme supporting the revitalization of public spaces provides an opportunity for members of the public to make their own ideas a reality – harnessing people’s creativity to transform streets, squares, parks and other spaces. The City has recently announced the second call for projects as part of the programme; a total of 5 million CZK will be released from the budget to fund successful applications. The programme not only supports aesthetic improvements, but also enables functional transformations which make public spaces more useful for Ostrava’s citizens. Applications can be submitted from 15 January to 9 April 2018.

An expert committee will evaluate the submitted projects in April, and by the end of May the City will make the final decision on which projects will be selected to receive funding.

The maximum funding available for each individual project is 500 000 CZK (compared with 1 million in the previous call), and the criteria for eligible applicants have been narrowed; applications will only be accepted from individual citizens (i.e. not businesses) or non-profit-making NGOs (associations, institutions, foundations, public benefit organizations, etc.).

Deputy Mayor Kateřina Šebestová explained the changes:

Now it will no longer be possible for large institutions and companies to submit applications. We have also reduced the maximum funding available to each project, which will enable us to target smaller community-based projects. In the first call we received 16 applications, requesting a total 5.7 million CZK. The City supported 11 of these projects, releasing 4.1 million CZK of funding.

Each project must be supported by at least 15 residents over the age of 15; the application must include their signatures. Another condition for this year’s call is that projects must involve members of the public in both the planning and implementation phases. This reflects the City’s attempt to promote a participative approach to urban development, giving local people a real say in the environment where they live. The people involved in a project of this type help to create a natural local community, and this ensures that the public spaces will be genuinely used and cared for; it also helps to prevent vandalism and contributes to a safer urban environment for everybody.

Projects must also include written consent from the owner of the site; this will provide a guarantee that the project is realistic and fully viable, and that there will be no obstacles to its successful implementation.

One of the successful projects from the first round was the restoration of statues in the Milady Horákové orchard. These four, valued statues were sculpted during the International Symposium of Spatial Forms, held in Ostrava in 1967 and 1969. The city of Ostrava provided this project with 99,000 Czech koruna for the restoration.

Another was the restoration of the sculptural fountain at the Hlubina coal mine. The grant funding will be used to create a universal sculptural mould, to cast the first sculpture, and to locate it in a recently restored water tank that was formerly used by firefighters. The work itself is by the renowned sculptor Kurt Gebauer, and it celebrates Ostrava’s coalmining heritage using a 21st-century artistic language.

The complete document setting out the terms and conditions of the grant programme is available (in Czech) at the City’s website www.ostrava.cz (in the section “Dotace” – i.e. “subsidies”) and at http://fajnova.cz/projekt/fajnovyprostor/.

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