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This Friday sees the start of Kůra - a two-day festival of experimental art and music held in a 19th century brewery in Kutná Hora, east of Prague. The fest is in just its second year but will see work by some 60 artists and musicians, from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and further abroad.

Fans of urban fantasy may be interested to learn more about “Come Hell or High Water” a trilogy written by New York-based author Stephen Morris – a former Eastern Orthodox chaplain at Columbia University. His series, set in Prague, not only blends past legend with the present, but meticulously works with occult European magical practices and beliefs.

Events around the Czech Republic are commemorating internationally renowned author Bohumil Hrabal who would have turned 100 this day. On the occasion I spoke to the Czech-born documentary filmmaker and photographer Jan Kaplan, now based in London, who was just a student when he first met the writer. He then became closer friends with Hrabal in the 1990s, giving him a tour of London. He has now opened a new exhibition of previously unpublished portraits of Hrabal at Prague’s Lucerna Palace.

Three theatre groups from Prague, Budapest and London joined forces last year to create a multidisciplinary project called home:scape. Combining interviews, blog entries and a multimedia theatre performance the creators looked at the theme of home, trying to find out what defines that ambiguous concept for different people – those who had lived in one place their whole lives, and those who are in constant flux. I asked Jonathan Kennedy, the executive director of one of the theatre troupes - Tara Arts in London –how the idea for the project came

The Czech Republic lost a film legend this week with the passing of director, screenwriter Věra Chytilová, aged 85. Chytilová, known for her lifelong fearless approach, was one of the brightest talents to come out of the Czech New Wave, alongside ‘alumni’ like Miloš Forman and Jiří Menzel.

Works by the great Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali are currently on exhibit at the Brno City Museum at Špilberk Castle in Brno. The travelling exhibition, which has already been shown in a number of European cities, focusses not on the artists’ best-known work, but rather smaller pieces and commissions, utilising a variety of different formats and artistic techniques.

Not far from the National Theatre, tucked away on Bartolomějská street, the small flagship store of the label Leeda boasts some of the most original, colorful and hip clothing in the Czech capital. Run by two young designers, Lucie Kutálková and Lucie Trnková, Leeda has been putting out its limited edition collections for nearly seven years. The two designers both studied at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. Lucie Kutálková explains how the two were given a unique opportunity to establish their own label and retail space.

Most dedicated listeners but also more casual fans of classical music have at some point wondered about the sound of early musical instruments once played by the great composers. The question of how historic instruments might have sounded veritably haunted Russian pianist Anton Rubinstein, who lamented that while some instruments that had survived in museums they had long lost their original colour and tone. The result was that nobody really knew any longer which techniques had been used in their production, or what their exact sound was like. That

Singer-songwriter Albert Černý is well-known to local guitar pop fans thanks to his former group, Charlie Straight. Indeed, their 2009 UK-inspired debut She’s A Good Swimmer won the Czech equivalent of a Grammy for album of the year. Now the rangy and charismatic frontman is back with a new band, Lake Malawi, who are just about to play their first live shows around the Czech Republic. On the eve of those shows, I spoke to Černý at our studios. Our conversation started with where it all started: his hometown of Třinec, one of the country’s most easterly

For 12 years Peter Freestone was a personal assistant and close friend to Freddie Mercury, the singer who reached superstardom with the rock group Queen. He was with also there during the singer’s last days in 1991. Since the start of the Noughties, Freestone has lived in the Czech Republic. I contacted him this week after it was confirmed that Queen will release three tracks that time forgot which Mercury recorded with Michael Jackson, a recording at which Freestone was present.