Petr Jurníček

The older ones who had been there for sixty-eight didn’t want to speak up, but there was only a few of them. Of course there was a lot of fear, a lot of respect, about what would happen, but the motivating force which affected mainly parents and artists, and other people who said: “We can’t let them beat children!” It was incredibly strong from those parents that they went with their children to support them at the strikes. But it probably wasn’t like that everywhere. But when it came to our school, it was incredible.

“We more or less knew that we would go on strike. We had already called people that weekend and Monday we met at Hollarka when the strike alert was sounded and all the lessons stopped. Again some people came there and explained everything that was going on and we started printing that week. I think it was on Friday. So Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, I think that it was on Tuesday when Jindra Havlík, who worked in exhibition design and actually had studied at our school – he was a Hollarka man. And Karel Čapek came too, he had taught me screen printing in my second year. Then Pepa Herčík and Zdeněk Netopil – an artist whose son was studying there. They came and told us it was time to print posters, simply. I learned then how to screen print, so it was a sort of yes/no decision, because spreading anti-state press at the time was not exactly taken very lightly. But one is young and one says: ‘Yes, let’s do it.’ So he goes through with it and starts up the press. The students were excited and they showed up to print. We printed for fourteen days straight, more or less.”