Location
Nová Perla

foto: Miloš vojtěchovský

foto: Miloš vojtěchovský foto: Miloš vojtěchovský foto: Miloš vojtěchovský

Nová Perla

Ivan Mečl

Ivan Mečl is an artist, critic and organizer. In the 1990s, he founded the Divus publishing house which published the Umělec magazine, as well as a number of books. He is an active cultural organizer and has also revitalized a number of decrepit buildings – he was, for example, trying to found the Praha-Vyšehrad cultural center, but the Czech railways ultimately backed out of the signed contract. In 2011, he founded the Divus Pragerkabarett community center in the Prague Transport Company’s building in Holešovice. Between 2014–2018 he operated the Nová Perla cultural space in an abandoned paper mill in Vrané nad Vltavou. In 2018, him and his friends managed to buy a former thread factory built in 1910, which stands at the edge of Kyjov, near Česká Lípa in Northern Bohemia. He is currently building the Perla cultural center there, which includes café Perla, the Divus publishing house, a book shop, studios and a gallery. The informal collective of colleagues is partaking in revitalizing the surroundings of Nová Perla, creating a vegetable garden, and there is also a plan for a park which would include local species of trees. The Nová Perla collaborates with similar initiatives on the basis of partnership and exchange. They strive for autonomy and sustainable operations.