Policy Plan 2023-2025

Foreword

Since early 2020, the COVID pandemic has kept the world in its grip. Early 2021, new vaccines became available on a large scale, and by now, end of 2022, several rounds of vaccination and booster vaccines have been administered. The number of deaths caused by COVID has dropped dramatically and many restrictions have been lowered or lifted completely.We do not know if in 2023 there will again be severe restrictions, but we are optimistic enough to update our policy plans to reflect this trend.

Policy Plan 2023 – 2025: summary

With the successful vaccine roll-out world-wide, we expect that as off 2023, most restrictions due to the COVID-19 Pandemic will be lifted and we can resume our normal activities.

Since November 2020, Society Director Robert Dulfer has been 50% employed by the Biology Center, Czech Academy of Sciences, Ceske Budejovice. Because of this, his time for developing, submitting, and working on large international projects for the Society has been limited. This employment ends 31 December 2024; as of that moment, Robert will be again fully active for the Society.

At least for this moment, we will continue with the traditional Easter, Potato Day, and Devil’s Forging (Mikulas) events. These events are sponsored by the Municipality of Nove Hrady and have become a fixed staple of the Nove Hrady Cultural Calendar.

For the last 20 years, the Society has facilitated Thematic Children Summer Camps for children of the Jílovice municipality and aurroundings. The initiators of the summer camp want to establish their own organization for this in the near future. Therefore, 2023 will be the last year our Society will provide a logistic and financial basis for the summer camp.

The Interreg-Danube project Network on WWI heritage ended in 2019, but as mentioned earlier, we will continue with several of the activities, in particular actively involving locals and schools in extending the heritage activities and developing heritage tourism with our foreign partners.

Before the pandemic, the Society outlined plans to help cancer patients in our region through an online information and discussion platform based upon existing platforms in the USA, UK, and the Netherlands. This was delayed and it is not clear if we can find experienced staff and/or outside help to establish this in the near future.

Planned projects – activities – events in 2023-2025

Planned projects – activities – events in 2023-2025

1. Kojákovice Museum – WW I heritage
Work on the permanent WWI exhibition will continue. Source research and interviews with people from the region will help us extend the database with information of soldiers from the region that fell during WWI, both on the Austro-Hungarian side and in the independent Czech Legion fighting on the Allied side. Time and funding allowing, we also plan to publish a booklet this period about the WWI memories and events affecting the village.     

2. Historic Peat Railroad and museum.     
Blacksmith Daniel Cerny has premises in the nearby Blata forest, a former peat excavation area. Historically, the peat excavation used a small-gauge railroad to transport peat from the excavation area to the main railroad in Jakule. Part of that railroad dam (1 km) and the original locomotive depot are on Daniel’s premises. In 2015, the Society submitted an application for restoring this railroad to the Danube Transnational Programme, which unfortunately was rejected.     

With some support from local companies and volunteer work, we started cleaning the depot in 2021. Daniel now also has options to purchasing a suitable locomotive for the railroad and a local company donated 300 meter of rails.     

Funding allowing, we will employ Daniel Cerny in the second half of 2023 and beyond, to coordinate practical work on restoring the railroad. The long-term aim is to restore a private functional small-gauge railroad between the depot and the main railroad station in Jakule. Part of the premises will be improved to become a living museum-workshop-education centre on blacksmithing and peat excavation.     

3. Craft Network
Ccombining craft education and heritage conservation in an international network. These activities started in 2019, but were cancelled due to the Covid pandemic. We will try to prepare EU applications under the new rounds of EU projects for the period 2021-2028. With Director Robert Dulfer being limited in time and without much financial reserve for the Society, we will restart these efforts at the earliest in 2024, more likely in 2025.     

4. ABANA - blacksmith meetings
As part of our Craft activities, the Society will again try to obtain funding to take a blacksmith team to the ABANA blacksmith conference in 2024. We also will try to organize blacksmith meetings through the Newcastles of the World network.     

5. Ecomuseum restart continues without us
In the early 2000s, the Society was involved in pilot projects and international cooperation to help develop the Ecomuseum concept. An Ecomuseum is a museum without walls, involving the local people in preserving and presenting their heritage. This concept failed to gain traction in our region. A consortium of Local Action Groups (Leader – LAG) throughout Europe planned to renew this concept and the Society was initially part of this. However, we are not a LAG and do not have enough funding to participate any longer. We will continue to promote the Ecomuseum idea, if not under this title.     

6. Education – EU Erasmus+ programme
Awareness for and education on establishing craft networks, heritage conservation, cultural tourism, and ecomuseums can be achieved by participating in or organizing EU Erasmus+ projects on student, staff, and stakeholder mobility. The program funding is 100%, no prefinancing and leaves some small profit for the Society as well. An application for this was rejected, but we will look for partners and try to apply again for the year 2024 and later.     

7. Marketing     
Visitors to our centres mention that they have problems finding us, and also that our websites are not easy accessible on smart phones. In the coming period, updating our websites to mobile-friendly and more attractive for tourists will have a high priority. We will announce our activities more pronounced on social media and platforms like Trip Advisor and Booking.com, and also update more regularly. We will try find funding for a media campaign, but if no funds are forthcoming, the work will be done with volunteers   

 

The full Policy Plan including mission and organization details can be downloaded here