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The centre of Prague will be transformed for several nights this week, when it hosts the first ever Signal Light Festival. From Thursday to Sunday, leading European practitioners of video mapping will be turning some of the city’s buildings into giant screens, while a number of well-known Czech artists have also created special installations. The man behind the whole thing is Martin Pošta, former director of the Fresh Film Fest. When we spoke, I first asked Pošta how he had got into the field of light art.

Jaroslav Pavlíček is a survival expert, author and head of the Eco Nelson Antarctic research station located on Nelson Island in the South Shetlands, about one-hundred kilometres from the Antarctic continent. Mr. Pavlíček was born in 1943, and studied Korean Studies before the Soviet invasion of 1968 resulted in him working in the High Tatra Mountains in Slovakia, thus beginning a lifetime devoted to survival. I began by asking how Pavlíček ended up in the field of Korean Studies and how from there he ended up in the Tatra Mountains.

Actor Ivan Shvedoff moved to Prague at the end of the 1990s from his native St. Petersburg. Since arriving here he has extended his filmography greatly, with roles in a number of Hollywood movies and Czech productions such as Mamas and Papas. Shvedoff is also big in Germany and Austria, where he does a lot of TV work. When he stopped by at our studios, my first question for the Russian actor was what led him to move here in the first place.

On Monday, the NGO Auto*mat is unveiling a monument at the very spot where founding member Jan Bouchal was killed while cycling in Prague. And September will be busy for the group, with a project to turn an embankment into a pedestrian zone about to begin and an annual day of street festivals scheduled for later in the month. Tereza Vohryzková is one of the people behind Auto*mat. When we spoke, she said its main activities included encouraging alternatives to car transport in the city and changing attitudes to public space.

Josef Svoboda is a professor, Arctic ecologist and author. Born in 1929 in Prague, Mr. Svoboda studied science and philosophy at Masaryk and Charles universities. He was imprisoned for nine years by the communist regime in 1949 for alleged treason and espionage and then emigrated to Canada in 1968, where he has lived ever since. I began by asking Svoboda about his earliest memories of growing up in pre-war Czechoslovakia.

After fleeing from her native Prague in August 1968, Liba Taylor made a new life for herself in the UK, where she studied photography under a member of the prestigious Magnum Photos group. From her base in London she travelled extensively, documenting the work of major international humanitarian agencies – including the UNHCR, UNICEF and Save the Children – in some of the poorest and most desolate spots on earth.

Russia’s new law banning the “promotion” of homosexuality has come in for much criticism internationally – and is only the latest occasion on which Moscow has found itself at odds with Western opinion. But does the Kremlin care what people outside Russia think? And what are the chances of its “sovereign democracy” someday giving way to genuine democracy? One person well placed to discuss these questions and more is Lenka Kabrhelová, who was Czech Radio’s Moscow correspondent from 2008 to this spring. My first question for Kabrhelová when we spoke:

The third Prague Pride has just got underway, with a week of events celebrating sexual minorities due to culminate in a huge parade through the city on Saturday. On the eve of the event, I spoke to its director Czeslaw Walek about a range of issues, including Prague Pride’s relations with the current and former Czech presidents. But as this year’s theme is coming out my first question was what Walek and other LGBT leaders can do to make that process easier for those who are still in the closet.

Mikoláš Růžička is perhaps best-known as one half of the guitar pop duo Republic of Two, who a few years back were named Best New Act at the Czech equivalents of the Grammys. However, this summer he is performing at festivals around the country with Piano, a project that began with an LP recorded in his apartment and has grown into a full band. Růžička comes from a South Bohemian village where his dad is the local art teacher, and alongside his career in music also works in the visual arts field.

Lukáš Houdek is a man of varied interests. As well as being a photographer who has explored the post-war massacres of Czechoslovakia’s ethnic Germans, he is co-curator of an exhibition entitled Transgender Me that gets underway in Prague on Monday. In addition, Houdek, a Romani Studies graduate, writes for a leading Roma affairs website; indeed, for much of our interview I was under the mistaken impression that he himself was a member of the ethnic minority.