By a one-year-process of mindfulness and facilitation, we – the PLATO team – have arrived at the principles and aims incorporated in this charter. As members of the PLATO team, we shall pursue them in our work and our activities.
PLATO Ostrava is a municipal gallery of contemporary art. As it possesses no permanent collection of its own, it focuses on living art, its presentation, its sharing, and its shared discussion. It has been established by the municipality of Ostrava, and it is run as an incorporated public entity.
The fundamental goals of PLATO are: to promote contemporary art; to create a space for its development and its positive reception by the public; and to highlight its accessibility. Thus, the span of PLATO’s endeavors includes – besides exhibitions – the search for other ways of engaging with art: collaborating with artists; educational activities; research; and a commitment to stimulate exchange with the public.
The administration of PLATO is the responsibility of a director. The gallery manages the municipal property it has been endowed with, and it adheres to all the operative legislation and regulations that outline the functioning of public cultural entities. This framework – while being a given binding for everyone employed at PLATO – sets merely a baseline for the day-to-day work, cooperation and search for meaningful forms of the gallery’s functioning.
Both the day-to-day run of PLATO and the considerations regarding its future are based on open communication and shared decisionmaking. The team is striving to work in a consultative and participative manner, which means: to share responsibility; to allow discussion regarding all significant topics; and to include the utmost variety of voices into the conversation regarding the future direction of the gallery.
The ideal we are aiming at is a high degree of self-organisation and mutual trust. Yet, in our particular case, self-organisation has limits. PLATO is an incorporated public entity and its management directly reports to the municipality as its grantor. We view the regulations as a supporting structure. Thus, in practice, the team is continuously seeking to achieve a level of balance between freedom, shared responsibility, and the obligations pertaining to an organisation of the kind we are.
In 2026, based upon team consultations, an initial participative strategic PLATO plan shall be articulated, setting goals and priorities of development or desired changes for a three-year period. At the end of each subsequent year, a gallery parliament shall be convened, so as to assess the course of the realization of the plan and to revise it if needed.
PLATO arises from a dialogue among the team, the artists, artist collectives, experts/scholars in various fields, and the broad public. Together, we help create a strong, safe, and open environment, which allows for the sharing of various forms of contemporary art, of ways of thinking and working, and of experiences, uncertainties and questions connected with the present-day world and with the making of art and its challenges.
Besides showing and exhibiting art and contributing to the production of new artistic works and events, PLATO also medializes it, makes it accessible, and situates it within the realm of social relations. What it shares are, not merely results, but rather processes. It supplies a space for meeting, learning, and a collective re-thinking of the world at present – in all its local and global forms.
Through contemporary art, PLATO inspires the search for living well and living sustainably. The concept is understood broadly: besides comprising mutual relationships and the human society, it includes both the environment we inhabit and other forms of life. This is why an important part of PLATO is the permaculture garden, collectively cultivated and attended by our team as a place of care, sharing, and practical experience.
PLATO is, also, a place which naturally raises political issues – in the sense not of partisan politics but rather of interest in what is shared. In the activities it pursues, the gallery relates to the city, the region, and the world as a whole, and it views its own role as part of a broader striving for more sensitive, more just, and more sustainable manners of co-existence and of maintaining life on Earth.
Everything we do at PLATO – its program, its collaborations, the day-to-day run of the institution, and the relationships both internally and outward – we relate to four cardinal values regarding which we have come to an agreement as a team. Instead as a proclamation, we view them as practical guiding posts.
We are open one to another as well as to the world around. We believe in dialogue, information sharing, and acting transparently. To us, openness equals willingness to talk, listen, and build trust – both within the team and in relationships with artists, partners, and the public.
We are a team, while at the same time co-constituting our broader community. We cultivate good relations and help develop them consciously. We nurture belonging not just among ourselves but also with various more-than-human communities we encounter and inhabit. Socially, we endorse the principe of solidarity – especially with all endangered ones.
We strive to remain sensitive to all that is happening around and inside us. We hold perceptivity to be the foundation of critical thought, empathy, kindness, and respect – towards oneself, humankind, and nature.
We are searching for an equilibrium – between work and private life, local and international scene, the needs of the public and what we have to offer, the demands of the grantor and institutional autonomy. We advance the same approach as regards the balanced use of resources.
PLATO is founded upon co-operation, open communication, and shared responsibility. Both day-to-day management and strategic planning arise from consultations with other team members and participative decisionmaking.
The ideal we hold dear is self-organisation and horizontal co-operation. We are aware, however, of the limits stemming from the fact that we are a municipally incorporated entity. The hierarchy put in place by this formal institutional delimitation we understand primarily as a means towards a clear attribution of responsibilities, not as an instrument of power.
One’s position in the hierarchy grants them no right to act contrary to team values or regardless of them. As much as practically possible, we operate in an organic manner, and as partners.
Any single team member may approach anybody else and ask for assistance or support. Anyone can suggest a change. All team members are encouraged to point out existing problems – as well as to appraise all that goes well.
Thus, all together, we nurture a team culture whose nature is progressively specified by agreements attained collectively, by employing tools such as consulting groups, open space, or world café. These agreements may be articulated in writing.
Trust at all levels: among the team members, as well as with regard to the artists, collaborators, and visitors. In the absence of trust, no care, no nourishment, no long-term co-operation is possible.
The environment we actively inhabit matters to us in the broadest sense – with particular regard to nature and the respect due to more-than-human agents.
We share experiences, doubts, visions, problems, joys – refusing to view any of these as weaknesses.
We feel inspired by the principles of permaculture, transmitting them both into the day-to-day run of PLATO and into strategic decisionmaking.
We always strive to comprehend the whole before narrowing our focus on details.
We conserve them for moments of failures and challenges.
Being content equals achieving more. We accept the fact of our mutual differences and we accept the fact that noone can do everything. The variety within the team is valuable to us. Whenever feedback is provided, it is not done for the sake of finding fault, but rather as a means of accessing what is to come. We expect no miracles – while simultaneously trusting that everybody does their best.
Things do not have to be conspicuous right away. Sustainability is not merely a matter of materials but also of human and more-than-human energy. We strive to minimalize all needless junk and overload. A thoughtful local intervention can often achieve more than a search for the culprit.
We are keen to realize their creative potential. We blend skills, emotions, peculiarities. We share both worries and joys.
It is often there that the most significant things come up. We do not forever insist on every thing we have ever considered to be crucial. Practice trumps theory.
Whenever someone feels the need to make a change, we are able to share it and work on it together. The result may turn out differently from what anyone has ever been expecting – and that’s perfectly fine.
We view meetings and encounters, not as a purpose in itself, but rather as assisting means. They provide a forum to exchange information, to coordinate, to cultivate relationship, and to resolve issues.
Its point is to help exchange important information, provide brief immediate feedback, and collectively resolve outstanding issues. As a rule, it takes place four times a year.
It resolves operative and project issues as they come up. The meetings may take place either at regular intervals or ad hoc.
A coordinating forum for topics beyond the scope of particular teams. As a rule, it takes place once a month.
Serve to prepare, discuss, and plan particular projects and dramaturgy.
A non-hierarchical meeting of the entire team regarding topics that concertn the organisation as a whole. May be convened by any member of the team.
A voluntary format for resolving urgent issues from multiple perspectives. Convened by anyone who percieves the need to broach the topic.
A place to collect feedback, to discuss strategic planning, and to gather visions or resolve issues that concern the organisation as a whole.
A coordinational platform for the cultivation and development of the permaculture garden.
Once every year we collectively revisit this document so as to find out whether it really works and lives in practice. We also meet once a year in order to evaluate or draft an institutional strategic plan.
March 2026