The School at the Castle is a unique project linking experiential pedagogy and the genius loci of the Chateau Hill locality in Litomyšl. It exploits the potential of the link to period realities, cultural heritage monuments and important personalities who lived in the town. The current offer includes mostly two-hour programmes focused on music, visual arts, architecture, history, creative writing, preventive experiential programmes for collectives, or environmental education, for example. The project was launched in mid-2014. During the first half of the year, 300 children attended School at the Castle programmes. This year, so far, the number is already around 500 children and at least 500 more children are going to attend our programs during May-August this year.
Since 2014, the School at the Chateau's programme offer also includes the And the Book Saw the Light of the World programme, which continues the rich tradition of printing in Litomyšl. The programme introduces children in an entertaining way to the history of books, from the earliest handwritten codices, through the Renaissance discovery of the printing press by Johannes Guttenberg to the modern creation of ex-libris by Josef Váchal. In worksheets, they discover the beauty of Gothic writing and learn to name the different parts of a book. In a hands-on workshop, they create their own initial, an ex libris in the form of a stamp and even their own hand-bound book.
From the very beginning, our idea was to connect our program with the rich collections of historical exhibits from the printing industry of the HRG printing house in Litomyšl. It was about the realization of a small exposition on the Castle Hill, the possibility of excursions for the participants of the programs, etc. The best solution, for organizational and operational reasons, turned out to be the loan of several exhibits for the possibility of practical demonstrations directly during our program. Since April this year, we have had the unique opportunity to show our participants how printing and book production used to work. Children can see what a historic press looked like, letters and their typesetting, plates, etc. Since the loan, two programs have been held and all the children and their teachers have shown great enthusiasm for the hands-on demonstration. We would therefore like to thank HRG Printers for lending us the exhibits and enriching our programme. We are also very much looking forward to the upcoming Printing Museum and we hope that the school groups, who come to Litomyšl to the School at the Castle in ever increasing numbers, could become regular visitors.
