To Freiberg in Search of Earth’s Treasures

Children from IPS Stollberg, fashion designers from TUL, and the TUC team at the Terra Mineralia Museum

When you hear the word "field trip", most people picture a short excursion nearby. But in the InterBridge project, we went big – all the way to Freiberg in Saxony. And it was absolutely worth it! On Tuesday, July 23rd, around 35 children from the international school IPS Stollberg visited the Terra Mineralia museum together with their mentors from the Chemnitz University of Technology – Daisy, Johannes, André and Kristina.

And since every InterBridge event is about cross-border exchange, we sent two creative delegates from Liberec – fashion designers Kateřina and Lada from the Department of Design at the Faculty of Textile Engineering, TUL. The two are currently preparing a fashion collection for the Mercedes-Benz Prague Fashion Week. But it wasn't just about inspiration – the visit lasted more than three hours and offered a fascinating look into the world of minerals from across the globe.

Kateřina and Lada also stepped in as expert guides and shared stories about Czech mineral treasures – from moldavites formed by meteorite impact, to the historic Bohemian garnet once valued as highly as gold. They also talked about kaolin from the Karlovy Vary region, essential for porcelain, and fluorites from the Ore Mountains that glow under UV light.

And the story continues – in autumn, Czech pupils will head to the Museum of the Bohemian Paradise in Turnov. There, they'll not only explore local gemstones, but also join the creative part of the project: like their German peers, they’ll paint stones with acrylic markers. These artworks will be photographed and transformed into large-scale mosaics, where each "pixel" is a painted stone. Our colleague Johannes from TU Chemnitz is working on the special visual processing.

Once again, InterBridge has brought together science, art and cross-border encounters – and proven they’re a surprisingly good match.

Hana Křížová