10 years
City Gallery of Contemporary Art

PLATO

Programme

Overnight garden gathering:

48 Hours on PLATO’s Soil

Sat 20/6/2026–Sun 21/6/2026

Location:
◊ PLATO, Porážková 26

📛 Part of the 10th anniversary celebrations of PLATO.

Registration from 1/4/2026 at 10 am to 1/6/2026

The event is open to individuals, as well as families and groups.

The event is only for registered participants.

Overnight stay on site is optional; please bring your own tents.

Vegetarian catering is available throughout the event.

A children’s group (5+) will be available during the programme.

Detailed information, including pricing, can be found in a separate section.

Have you ever spent a night outdoors in the city? Now you can. Join us for a sleepover and a two-day programme featuring fermentation, natural dyeing with plants, composting, plant-inspired movement, garden queering, and ceramics.

The sleepover in our garden expands the exhibition Soil and Friends through hands-on experiences and an embodied exploration of urban environments and our relationship with urban soil – something we often overlook. Beneath our feet lies another vast city, inhabited not by us, but by underground animals, plants, and fungi. It is a fascinating world, as little explored as the ocean. Let’s spend a weekend befriending more-than-human organisms, exploring and imagining the city beneath us.

Guiding us in discovering soil will be a group of lecturers and facilitators who have prepared a range of workshops and activities. We will learn different methods of colour fermentation – fermenting plants and fruits – as well as natural dyeing with herbs, which is gentle on our bodies and avoids the harmful effects of chemical dyes. We will also explore composting as a form of fermentation, learning how to prepare compost and understanding its different types. Together, we will reflect on how we can heal with the garden, how to restore polluted soil, and how, in doing so, we may also heal our own bodies. We will experience the garden through a new card game created for PLATO – Key to the Garden.

We will move like plants, perhaps even dance – barefoot and in dialogue with flowers. Plants also play an important role in human culture, and we will discover stories of floral symbols and codes that form a meaningful, sometimes secret language of flowers, for example within queer communities. We will also learn about other urban gardens through a discussion with their representatives, focusing on the experiences and joys of local community gardens. The conversation will be led by permaculture specialist Adéla Hrubá, who brings extensive experience working with children, schools, and kindergartens. There will also be space for spontaneous activities, especially around the evening campfire. And when we finally lie down to sleep directly on the ground, we will be very close to the underground world – and perhaps enter it in our dreams.

The programme will take place in the garden. In case of bad weather, activities will move indoors to the gallery. We will adapt to both heat and rain.

anto_nie
artist and facilitator

Fuki
dancer, hairdresser and pigeon rights activist

Adéla Hrubá
lecturer and permaculture designer

Lenka Kubelová
fermentation lecturer

Barbora Lungová
artist and queer gardener

Hana Sezimová
biologist and educator

Aleksandra Skorupka
Polish artist and educator

Lenka Škutová
ceramic artist

Denisa Tomášková
permaculture designer and gardener

anto_nie is an artist and facilitator with roots in activist environments. In their work, they explore different approaches to what can be understood as care; they facilitate workshops inspired by the practice of Adrienne Maree Brown, focusing on collective resilience and herbalism. They also work with 3D, game engines, immersive sound, and other ways of creating communal non-physical spaces. They live in Prague.

Fuki is a dancer, hairdresser, and pigeon rights activist. They have been dedicated to breakdance for ten years, and in recent years also work as a teacher. Their Pigeon Hair Salon, through which we could imagine what it would be like to live with animals in respect and without fear, was presented at PLATO as part of the exhibition On the Run, Found a Hideout, Still Escaping at the turn of 2023 and 2024. They live in Ostrava.

Adéla Hrubá is a lecturer and permaculture designer. She leads permaculture courses, organizes happenings and educational lectures for the public, and works as a consultant. Her nearly one-hectare garden in the foothills of the Orlické Mountains is part of the Network of Demonstration Permaculture Projects and is also a Demonstration Natural Garden. She initiated the establishment of a community garden in the pedestrian zone in Žamberk (Garden Without a Fence). She is currently a member of the international initiative Children in Permaculture, which aims to integrate permaculture and sustainable living principles into school curricula and develop supporting materials. She is the main author of the publication Observe and Act: Permaculture with Children.

Lenka Kubelová works with fermentation, natural dyes, and gentle activism. As an editor, she prepared the Czech editions of books by fermentation classics Sandor Katz and Pascal Baudar. She leads community workshops and projects focused on the tastes and colours of place. She wishes for everyone to start fermenting and to see mindful, non-toxic, and slow processes at least as a possibility. She runs Studio Cibule, an art and fermentation laboratory (@studio.cibule).

Barbora Lungová is an artist, queer gardener, and educator at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Brno University of Technology. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. In her artistic practice, she focuses on painting informed by film studies theory, particularly addressing power structures of representation—critically and ironically depicting patriarchy and canons of masculinity from a feminist perspective, as well as exploring positive representations of queer identities and desires. Her recent projects focus on environmental themes and so-called critical gardening. She lives between Brno and her hometown Kyjov.

Hana Sezimová graduated from the Faculty of Science at the University of Ostrava, specialising in biology and chemistry. She currently works at the Department of Biology and Ecology at the same faculty. Her research focuses on determining whether harmful environmental substances cause short-term or long-term damage using indicator organisms, and on monitoring specific biological traits (biomarkers) that help assess environmental conditions.

Aleksandra Skorupka is a Polish artist, cultural worker, and educator. She draws and creates batik textiles, using natural dyeing techniques and recycled or found materials imbued with memory. Her practice is rooted in informal knowledge production, textile history, and gardening. In spring and summer 2025, she cared for the PLATO garden as part of a residency. She leads workshops in various institutions and is active in a local community centre in Warsaw’s Żoliborz district. She studied painting at Magdalena Abakanowicz University of the Arts in Poznań and later completed a master’s degree in Artistic Research and Curatorial Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. She lives in Warsaw.

Lenka Škutová is an artist working with ceramics. She studied at the Painting Studio of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ostrava. Her work focuses primarily on ceramics, creating both artistic objects and functional pieces that connect utility with aesthetics. She draws inspiration from landscape, nature, human relationships, and the simplicity of everyday life. She hand-builds her ceramics with an emphasis on direct contact with the material, and her process is intuitive. She lives in Ostrava.

Denisa Tomášková is a permaculture lecturer and designer. She studied permaculture with its founder Bill Mollison and has been practising it for 20 years. Her work focuses on the consistent application of permaculture principles on land, especially water management and related landscape shaping, as well as soil care, composting, and intensive food production. She currently teaches permaculture, designs gardens and farms, and runs her own permaculture flower micro-farm in the Elbe region.

Saturday 20/6

8.30–9 h
Registration

9–9.30 h
Opening gathering

9.30–13 h
Workshop: Aleksandra Skorupka – Dyeing with herbs and weeds
A morning with a Polish artist.

9.30–10.30 h and 11–12 h
Workshop: Fuki – Soil: Plants Dance
The dance will take place directly in the garden—on grass, on soil, barefoot. Each participant will choose a plant from the garden and, together with Fuki, create a short choreography/set inspired by it.

9.30–10.30 h and 11–12 h
Workshop: Lenka Škutová – Soil, Clay, Water
We will model small clay irrigation vessels (olla). We will plant a few annual seeds into the finished vessels and place the unfired pots directly into the garden. Over time, the vessels will naturally decompose, becoming part of the place—perhaps even giving rise to flowers.

13–14 h
Lunch

14–15.30 h
Lecture: Denisa Tomášková – Composting in a Permaculture Garden
Compost is one of the most valuable elements in a garden. However, not every gardener knows how to handle it properly or what to avoid. We will discuss different types of compost, how to make them, and how to use them in the garden. We will also show how composting works at PLATO, what challenges we face, and how we address them.

16–18 h
Panel discussion: Community gardens in the Moravian-Silesian region and beyond – an alternative to supermarket vegetables or an attempt to create a village square in the city?
A discussion with representatives of community gardens about establishing shared gardens, their purpose, and their diversity. Moderated by Adéla Hrubá.

Participants:
Community Park Tržnice (Černá louka), Ostrava – speaker Žaneta Sochorová
Community Park Jindřich, Ostrava – speaker Zuzana Vinklářová
Community Garden Třinec – speaker Karel Lyčka
Community Garden Nádraž-Ka – speaker Zuzana Klusová

18–19 h
Dinner

19–22 h
Campfire
Shared preparation and open programme.

From 22 h
Quiet hours

Sunday 21/6

8–9 h
Breakfast and morning gathering

9–13 h Workshop: Lenka Kubelová – Colour Fermentation
Lactic, alcoholic, and acetic fermentation. Fermentation can be understood as a way of preserving harvests, enhancing flavour, supporting the microbiome, returning to living and slow food, deepening our relationship with food, and finding joy in the bubbling process. You will learn the principles and try both proven and new combinations.

9–10 h and 11.30–13 h
Board game: anto_nie
Premiere of the new board game Key to the Garden, guided by its author, artist anto_nie.

9–10 h and 11.30–13 h
Lecture and performative walk: Barbora Lungová – Queering the Garden
A morning block with an artist and queer gardener.

10.15–11.15 h
Lecture: Hana Sezimová – Healing Toxic Soil
A session with a biologist currently working at the Department of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Science, University of Ostrava.

13–14 h
Lunch

14 h
Closing, group photo, camp takedown

Programme subject to change.

Translation assisted by ChatGPT.

Event date and format

A two-day public gathering with the option to stay overnight in the garden
20–21/6/2026

Who is the event for

The event is open to individuals, families, and groups of all ages, from the region and beyond.
For families and groups, only one contact person completes the registration.

Location

The programme takes place in the centre of Ostrava, in the garden around the PLATO building (Porážková 26).
In case of bad weather, activities will move indoors to the gallery. The programme will be adapted to both heat and rain.

Admission and prices

Programme: 200 CZK / person
Overnight stay: 100 CZK / tent (or other type of overnight setup on a tent spot)
Vegetarian meals (optional): 600 CZK / person
Children’s group: 150 CZK / child (including 3 snacks)

Overnight stay

Sleeping takes place in the PLATO garden.

all equipment (including tents) must be brought by participants
facilities in the gallery building will be available (toilets and water)
overnight stay is not required to attend the programme

Catering

We offer vegetarian meals throughout the event.

The price includes:

Saturday: lunch and dinner
Sunday: breakfast and lunch

Additional information:

individual meals cannot be ordered; only full catering for the entire event
food for the Saturday campfire is not included (can be purchased on site)
please bring your own tableware
due to operational reasons, we cannot accommodate food allergies or intolerances

Children and children’s group

A children’s group for ages 5+ will be available throughout the programme.