“The people of Europe can convert their vision into reality only if they feel linked and motivated by what I would call a European consciousness. A profound awareness that they are all Europeans together. A deep feeling of unity, albeit unity in diversity. A profound awareness of their thousand-year-old common history and spiritual tradition. Europe is made up mainly of small nations, whose history is mutually linked by thousands of threads which together form the finished fabric.”
Václav Havel, acceptance speech after receiving the Erasmus Prize, March 1986
As a part of this year’s Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union, nine young Czech artists and designers created decorations for two buildings in Brussels. These artists decided to use their work to express the values that the European Union embodies for them and which they believe it should continue to embody in the future. They also tried to highlight the idea of Europeanism rather than to simply present the Czech Republic as one of the member states. Their collective project, as well as their individual endeavours, are linked by the concept of a community of plants sharing a single piece of soil, thus also stressing the environmental agenda, which will reverberate strongly during the Czech Presidency.
