On 5 May 2026, the School ARt Gallery community travelled from Prague to Jihlava for the official opening of the Czech School ARt Gallery at SUPŠ Jihlava–Helenín.
Students, teachers, artist David Strauzz and partners from across the international consortium came together at the school to celebrate the completion of a creative process that had developed over the course of the project.
The opening followed the international School ARt Gallery exhibition in Prague the previous evening and offered the consortium an opportunity to experience the Czech pilot where it had actually been created: inside the school, together with the students and teachers who made it happen.
One Man’s Waste, Another Man’s Treasure
The Czech School ARt Gallery was developed by students and teachers at SUPŠ Jihlava–Helenín together with contemporary visual and street artist David Strauzz.
Entitled One Man’s Waste, Another Man’s Treasure, the work explores ideas of waste, transformation, sustainability and collective creativity.
Rather than beginning with a conventional blank canvas, the participants worked with discarded materials. More than 600 fragments of textile waste were transformed into elements of a large-scale collaborative artwork.
The choice of material has a particular resonance at SUPŠ Jihlava–Helenín. The school itself has deep roots in textile education: it was established in 1948 as a vocational school specialising in knitting before gradually developing into today's art and design school.
Today its programmes range from painting and illustration to graphics and media, object and spatial design, fashion, interior design and arts management.
A work created together
The finished artwork is only one part of the result.
At the heart of the School ARt Gallery methodology is the process of co-creation: bringing students, teachers and professional artists together to experiment, make decisions and develop an artwork collectively.
Working alongside David Strauzz, the students explored how materials that might otherwise be considered waste could be reimagined through artistic practice. Individual fragments gradually became part of a larger composition — turning the idea of transformation into both the subject of the artwork and the way it was made.
And, like the other School ARt Galleries developed across Europe, the physical work does not stand alone. Augmented Reality adds a digital layer to the artwork, connecting the tangible creative process with the digital skills explored throughout the project.
Opening the gallery together
The opening on 5 May brought the whole process full circle.
The international School ARt Gallery partners joined students, teachers and David Strauzz at SUPŠ Jihlava–Helenín, beginning with a visit through the school and its creative environment.
The school itself provided a particularly fitting setting. Its studios cover disciplines including painting, illustration, spatial work, graphic and media design, fashion and interiors, while its approach to contemporary art also embraces photography, video, installation, conceptual practice and performance.
The visit was followed by the official opening ceremony — and, appropriately for a project built around young people and creativity, the celebration continued with music, a DJ and the students, teachers, artist and international partners together around the finished work.
It was not simply an unveiling of an artwork. It was a celebration of the people and process behind it.
A European project, experienced locally
The Jihlava opening also captured something central to School ARt Gallery.
Across the Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal and Spain, the project followed a shared methodology — but every school interpreted it through its own students, artists, materials, stories and surroundings.
In Jihlava–Helenín, that resulted in a work about transformation: discarded textile fragments becoming an artwork, individual contributions becoming a collective composition, and traditional material practice meeting digital technology.
The ceremony gave the international partnership the chance to see that process where it belonged: not in a report or presentation, but in the school itself, surrounded by the young people who created it.
From waste to artwork. From individual pieces to a collective whole. From the physical to the digital.
That is School ARt Gallery in practice.
Visit SUPŠ Jihlava–Helenín