Do-It-Yourself culture and its importance for Czech national and cultural identity: Current situtation in social, cultural, historical and political perspective, typology and potential for regional development

At present, Do-It-Yourself culture (DIY) is generally understood as part of the Czech national identity and a Czech national feature, which reflects the nation´s specific historical experience and national memory. Although DIY as a Czech national feature refers to the everyday experience under state socialism and particularly normalisation (1970s and 1980s) its roots are deeper. The goal of this project is to render and map the present forms of DIY and its history locating DIY in its broad social, cultural, historical and political context. The outcomes will subsequently be presented to the general public. At the same time, the project aims at assessing the DIY potential for developing local communities, raising their historical and local consciousness, and developing tourism.

The project has six goals: to provide a structured definition of DIY encompassing its private and public dimensions (how DIY objects affect genius loci) and categorise the outcomes of DIY; to map public DIY objects in two socially and economically divergent regions; to assess possibilities for cataloguing and protecting DIY objects; to strengthen local communities' awareness of the importance of DIY and its outcomes via exhibitions and an information website - this will strengthen local communities and give them a chance to express their relation to the DIY phenomenon; to situate DIY and its transformations in the context of social, historical and political developments in the Czech Republic (Czechoslovakia) with reference to the wide geopolitical context and analyse its changes and their impact on personal as well as Czech national identity; to present DIY to the general public including its complex history as a phenomenon that reflects changes to everyday life in the recent past and at present, and may improve the understanding of social transformations that have taken place in the Czech Republic in the previous decades.