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Baťa: designed to belong
Belonging is not accidental – it is designed. This panel explores how architecture shapes belonging – not just by providing shelter, but by designing everyday life.
SPEAKERS:
Sir John Tusa is a British arts administrator, author, journalist and former presenter of the BBC’s Newsnight. Born in Czechoslovakia, he moved to East Tilbury in 1939, where his father was Managing Director of the British Bata Shoe Company factory. He is Co-Chairman of the European Union Youth Orchestra and was previously Managing Director of the BBC World Service and Director of the Barbican Arts Centre. He is the author of On Board, Making a Noise and On Creativity.
Gillian Darley OBE is a widely published writer and historian who was President of the Twentieth Century Society from 2014 until 2021. She first visited East Tilbury, in search of the Bata industrial village, in the early 1970s, when researching and photographing her first book Villages of Vision (1975, reissued 2007). Ever since she has returned at regular Intervals. The village featured in her most recent book Excellent Essex (2019). In 2024 Gillian achieved a longed-for aim, a visit to Zlin.
Milan Balaban is a historian specializing in business, economic, and industrial history, with a focus on the global Bata Company network. He is a researcher at the Information Centre Bata, Tomas Bata University in Zlín, and a lecturer at Palacký University in Olomouc. His work examines industrialisation, company towns, and corporate mobility in Central and Eastern Europe. He has published several books, including Bata across Continents (2022), and articles in leading journals, and lectures internationally on multinational enterprises and industrial modernity.
Admission: £5 (+ Eventbrite fee) see booking link below