WOK at the Women in Arts International Conference in Brno

CO.LABS, in cooperation with KUMST Creative Centre, Institute of Art and Theatre, Vize tance and Divadlo BARKA, organised the conference Women in Arts in Brno on 17-18 April 2024. The mission of CO.LABS is to support the arts with a special focus on advocacy for development. The second edition of the conference focused on motherhood. The event organisers asked questions similar to those formulated by the team atf the Warsaw Cultural Observatory in the context of supporting parents working in the arts. What should you prepare for if you want to be a parent and continue to work in the arts and creative sector? What can institutions do to ensure comfortable working conditions for their staff who are parents and to prevent them from being discriminated against or harmed in any other way? How can motherhood and caring responsibilities be reconciled with working in the cultural sector? The first part of the conference was an opportunity to share practices in the Czech Republic, while the other provided a broader, international perspective.

In a presentation entitled “How to avoid the exclusion of parents working in the arts and how to support their professional development”, Anna Galas-Kosil talked about the activities undertaken at WOK in 2023, including projects such as the “Creative Mothers” residency and the pilot focus meeting with parents working in the arts, as well as the research she developed together with Magda Szpak on the situation of parents working in the cultural sector in precarious conditions. The presentations were followed by a debate chaired by Tereza Steiskalova, curator of tranzit.cz, with Dyana Gravina (Procreate Project), Isabel Mohn (Dance and Parenthood Working Group) and Anna Enhold-Danailov (Parents & Carers in Performing Arts).

During the conference, Anna Galas-Kosil gave an interview to the Czech newsletter KOMPOST.