The Cvernovka creative community showed their new studios in the former chemical school. (source: Jana Liptáková)
When the creative dwellers of the former thread factory known as Cvernovka opened the doors of their studios and ateliers to the general public on May 1 last year, they had no clue as to whether they would repeat this event sometime in the future. They did not even know whether they would continue as one community as they had to move from Cvernovka by the end of June 2016. Now, one year after, they not only have a new home but they have already managed to build their new studios. They showed them to people on May 1 as it has become a tradition over the last six years.
“Nostalgia does not have a place any more,” said Boris Meluš, graphic designer and a member of the team behind moving the Cvernovka community into their new premises. “The only thing we miss here are high ceilings. It is not possible to have them here.”
Designers, painters, photographers, IT experts and other so-called creatives praise the site of the former secondary chemistry school at Račianska street in the Nové Mesto borough of Bratislava and its environs, as the school with an adjacent dormitory is set in an extensive park, for which they have great plans.
During last year the creatives not only managed to find the new place but also to reconstruct the devastated school. They have already invested about €900,000 and voluntary work into the premises. They had to replace heating, piping and remove decaying plaster to make the school, which was abandoned for about five years, habitable again.
Out of the former community 80 percent moved into the school. The rest are new tenants. In total there are about 40 studios, in which up to 200 people work and there are no more available.
“The interest in the studios is huge,” Viliam Csino, another member of the team behind moving the Cvernovka community told The Slovak Spectator. “We have been fully occupied for two months.”
Rental contracts are normally for three years but for some studios only one year, so there is a chance that there will be some available in the future.
Now the community represented by the Cvernovka Foundation is working on the reconstruction of the ground floor of the school. Here they want to have a so-called cultural space also accessible to the general public. There will be screenings, theatre performances, lectures, a café with some refreshment and more. It should be complete by the end of the summer.
What next with the dormitory
While the Cvernovka Foundation has rented the school and the surrounding grounds from the Bratislava Self-governing Region (BSK) for 25 years, it rented the dormitory for only one year. They have used it as a temporary place for their studios until they reconstruct the school and build new ones.
Now they are preparing a project for its future usage. They are scheduled to submit it to the BSK by the end of May. BSK head Pavol Frešo believes that based on what the creative community has managed to do so far, they will agree upon the next usage of the dormitory by the creative community, too.
