Café Esperanto, 2011 –we presented Café Esperanto as part of Bureau de Change Sociale and transformed the Whitstable Museum Education Space into an artist-run, pop-up language cafe. We filled the Museum windows with images of Thomas G Masaryk (TGM), the first president of the former Czechoslovakia, to replicate the actions of the Prague Spring in 1968 where the president’s face popped up all over Prague in both, shop and cafe windows as an act of resistance against the invasion of Soviet tanks. Café Esperanto was inspired by the quote ‘To learn another language is to live another life’ – TGM. The informal, interactive language centre encouraged public participation and allowed for people to speak with others in a foreign language with the use of audio and video activities.
