Students auction art works, money raised will go to help Ukraine

Students of the Faculty of Architecture of CTU organized another event to help Ukraine. They donated their own artworks to the benefit auction. Those interested can get original photographs, drawings, porcelain, earrings with the motif of the Ukrainian flag, canvas bags and more. The auction will take place on the Facebook page of the Faculty of Architecture from April 6 to 13, 2022. The money will be sent to the accounts of selected charities.

Markéta Ptáčková, a 3rd year Design student who co-organised the charity sale of items at the student awards ceremony Olověný Dušan 2022, is helping to organise the auction. Faculty newsletter Alfa asked her for an interview. 

Alfa: When and where was your student initiative founded? 

Markéta Ptáčková: During the studios on Monday, the designer Henrieta Nezpěváková came to us with the idea that it would not be a bad idea to support Ukraine by selling our works.  After a moment of hesitation – and also fearing that the idea would get lost in the complexities of organizing – I decided to help. I'm the kind of person who, when someone needs help, doesn't panic and tries my best. But at the same time, I'm not one to go out to help with refugees, fill out forms for children and their mothers. I'm just not sure I could handle the tension and the atmosphere, and that's a minimal thing these days.  As a result, I just sent out forms, answered emails etc, and organised to receive work, various designs and drawings and sketches and stuff. Explaining the sale through scanning the QR code for People in Need so that payment would go directly from the buyers was probably the most complicated part. It's probably the least I could do. 

But I guess you were not alone. 

I have friends from the Podtvrzí association who, among other things, organized a concert in support of Ukraine in Lucerna-bar. I asked them about some legalities. With the people from the Architecture Students' Association we discussed the date – before the announcement of Dušan and the place of the sale and so on. And fortunately, I was approached by a couple of my colleagues that they could help at the booth, so I was able to go for a while on Thursday for an evening figure drawing. 

It is certainly good that the school is interested in such student engagement – leaving aside other activities, both faculty and rectorate, that are aimed at directly supporting Ukrainian students. 

I personally think it's also the best way to engage students. For one thing, it helps them mentally deal with a new, slightly crazy situation and realize that something is going on. To have that feeling of helping when they usually don't have enough money in their bank account or don't have sleeping bags to send to the fundraiser. A lot of them aren't even resilient enough to help out in refugee centers... Or they're doing their undergraduate degree and so they're stressed. And donating a piece of work that's sitting on your shelf at home is the absolute simplest act – and it's already helping you. And People in Need will use the money to provide humanitarian aid. By the way, once this is all over, new houses will have to be built or old ones repaired, etc., so blankets, sleeping bags, work clothes will be needed anyway. And so we could repeat today's events, maybe once a month... It would be great to do an open-call once in a while for the students' work and auction those. I think it's just gonna be necessary to keep the help steady. These people's homes have been destroyed, and somebody's gonna have to rebuild them with somebody else's money. But there's another level to it: it's also something of a non-violent cause, something of a compulsion to talk about things. Which I actually miss among my classmates. 

By the way, how much interest have you noticed in the works from the Department of Design? 

Pretty decent. Not only students came, but also former students and parents and friends and teachers... 

I'll come back to your comment about the reasons for discussing Ukraine: as if you couldn't find another reason? 

Sometimes it's hard. We all need to work through the subject internally – because few of us know how to deal with all the new stuff. Finding out how someone else deals with it all; and a different approach can be an inspiration to me. 

But in school you have plenty of colleagues and also younger teachers to debate with. In the studio you know each other almost like family... 

It's like a strange bubble for me in school... It's like nothing is happening... You're doing your bachelor's degree, but the bachelor's degree is not what you really care about at the moment. So you feel like you need to discuss something right now. That it has to. But it's your personal, specific feeling, but other people may not even want to discuss it. So you don't know if you should mention it. When people were worried about their grandmother or grandfather or parents during the covid, I think the conversation was easier. We were connected by the face masks and the topic limited us in our daily lives. But the war in Ukraine no longer has that bridge. So maybe an event can help: just selling that particular something, which can lighten the communication and bring the conversation to the topic. 

My question is, why don't they want to talk more about the sensitive part? 

I guess it's some uncertainty on my part.... That's why I was glad to meet a classmate at the Dušan announcement who has a family friend from Ukraine and they were discussing the transfer of her family. And subsequently gave away all his money earned for the month to some fundraisers for humanitarian aid. I guess he needed to get it out of his system...   

Russia's aggression in Ukraine raises even more, perhaps deeper, questions for us – practically our neighbours. The Russians and the Belarusians, for example, are also studying with you. They are probably not enemies for you, as they were there on the front... 

You're right. I don't know how many are studying at our school. But I have friends from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine and I certainly don't see them as hostile. On the contrary, they're all good friends. I even live with one Belarusian and I consider her a very close person. By the way, I sometimes plant flowers – I work on garden maintenance with a bunch of people from Ukraine, and I'm always happy to have the opportunity to work side by side with them. I try to hold on to the idea among my acquaintances that you don't choose your place of birth. Not every Russian and Belarusian agrees with the regime. And one more thing: If everyone who curses Russians today didn't rebel...If they faced 15 years in prison. Let him dig into his conscience, would he rebel? Many would probably keep quiet. 

Did it occur to you, since the situation is slightly insane, as you say, that it would be most effective to just cancel school for a month or two? To concentrate on helping Ukrainian refugees? 

I see it a little differently. I think the school should work, even in a crisis. Or I would even say that we need to function – and function well. It's like a consciousness of stability, maybe more like normality. Nobody knows how the situation will continue and we need to keep life going.  

Thank you for the interview. 

Jiří Horský