CULTURE ISLAND

The Culture Island is an emerging cultural district in the center of České Budějovice.

It is taking shape at a time when the entire city center is undergoing a transformation. Cultural buildings are being reconstructed, investments are being made into public spaces, and a new cultural scene is developing. The goal is to create a vibrant cultural district that harnesses the synergy and potential of these changes, connecting individual cultural institutions into one recognizable and functional whole.

The Culture Island is built on:

• An overarching brand,
• Programmatic cooperation among institutions and joint audience development,
• Enhancing the visitor experience,
• Co-creating a lively public space.

The ambition is to create a vibrant and contemporary cultural district where people come to spend their time, discover new experiences, and repeatedly return—making it a natural destination for both locals and visitors.

Unlike the ECoC (European Capital of Culture) brand, the Culture Island will remain a permanent part of the city even after 2028.

1. Joint Events

The Culture Island creates joint events that connect multiple cultural institutions at once, transforming the city center into a vibrant cultural district. These events allow visitors to discover new places in a single day or evening, experience various forms of culture, and move naturally between institutions and public spaces.

Key joint events have included the Soutok (Confluence) Festival, with the Night on the Culture Island planned for 2027. In 2028, the largest joint events will be the opening and closing ceremonies of the European Capital of Culture 2028. These initiatives help attract new audiences, foster institutional collaboration, and demonstrate how a cultural district can function as a single, interconnected whole.

2. A Shared Experience

The cultural district creates an environment where discovering culture, navigating the offerings, and combining different experiences during a single visit is easy and accessible.

This is achieved through themed routes, curated program recommendations, gamification, joint information points, and activities focused on accessibility and volunteer engagement. These tools make it easier for people to cross the boundaries of individual institutions, discover new genres, and map out their own unique paths across the cultural district.

An essential component of the Culture Island is not just the programming inside the institutions, but also the surrounding culinary scene and the physical spaces connecting them. Riverbanks, parks, squares, and resting areas will gradually become an integral part of the overall cultural experience. These spots can host small-scale exhibitions, permanent or temporary art installations, street furniture, and other features that make staying in the city more enjoyable while naturally guiding visitors from one institution to the next.

In this way, the Culture Island establishes an environment where people do not just attend a single event, but can spend an entire day exploring the city, its culture, and its public spaces. For cultural organizations, this translates to broader audience sharing, longer visitor stays in the city center, and greater motivation for people to return to cultural events again and again.

3. A Shared Brand

The Culture Island unites the cultural offerings under a single, shared brand, transforming the center of České Budějovice into an easily recognizable cultural destination. It helps people decide where to go, what is happening, and why it is worth heading into the city center.

Through joint communication, a unified identity, and shared information tools, the cultural landscape will become clearer and more accessible. At the same time, the brand boosts the visibility of individual institutions, strengthens the image of České Budějovice as a city of culture, and creates a long-term framework for collaboration that will continue to function well after 2028.

JOINT AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT

The foundation of this approach lies in the long-term collaboration of cultural organizations, which began as early as 2023 during the European Capital of Culture (ECoC) candidacy. Together, we started asking crucial questions: who attends cultural events in the city, who are we failing to reach, and how can we engage with audiences systematically?

This was followed in 2024 by the "Audience Gym" (Divácká posilovna) educational program, which brought together the organizations of the Culture Island. The program was led by Agata Etmanowicz from the Impact Foundation, who brings extensive experience from ECoC projects in Rijeka, Kaunas, and Trenčín. Over the course of nine months, 15 full-day workshops were held, complemented by individual mentoring and the involvement of other European experts. The program also included hands-on audience research—ranging from testing programs with specific focus groups to general visitor research. In 2025, this is being followed up by an extensive study on the cultural behavior of local residents, which will guide our future planning.

As a result, the Culture Island today is built not only on a shared physical space but also on a shared approach to the audience—driven by the effort to attract new visitors while deepening relationships with existing ones.