Ondřej Chrást (* 1980) comes from Františkovy Lázně. He has lived in Prague 6 since October 2022 and is the chairman of the Prague Regional Pirate Association. He is currently (since January 2022) Deputy Minister of Culture Martin Baxa. In the period 2022-2026 he is the second elected representative of Prague 6. He graduated in Psychosocial Studies and Theology at Charles University and is also currently working at the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Economics in Prague, in the field of Economics and Management within the Arts Management Department, where he is capitalizing on his long-standing professional and personal interest in heritage care and in sustainability, economization and promotion of cultural heritage in general.
In Prague 6 he has served or is serving on the Commission for Territorial Development, the Cultural Commission and the Committee for Education and Training. He also serves on the Prague Regional Pirate Expert Teams (KET) with a similar focus. He is also active in the Pirate Party’s national Resort Teams for Education, Culture and Tourism. In 2021, he was elected by the Pirate Party National Forum to be a member of the government team of the Pirates and Mayors Coalition for Culture and is a co-creator of the coalition’s programme for culture.
He has long-term experience in management work in the non-profit sector in the field of culture and tourism in the organisations of the Association of Historical Settlements of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia and in the registered association Fatherland of Charles IV. Currently, he is professionally involved in the reforms of vocational tertiary education, where as a project manager of the Association of Vocational Tertiary Education, z.s. he coordinates international and local projects related to changes in education and society in connection with the “phenomenon 4.0”. In 2019-2021, he worked part-time as an assistant to the Pirate MP Lenka Kozlova, where he worked on education and culture issues.
He was a member of the Supervisory Board of Prague City Tourism, a. s. (he resigned in January 2022 due to a conflict of interest with his position as a Deputy Member of the Government). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Prague Film Fund, a non-profit organization, where he tries to work to promote Prague abroad as a cultural metropolis, not as a crowded metropolis of cheap alcohol. He is involved in several non-profit organizations with a cultural focus. He was one of the initiators and co-coordinators of the 700th anniversary of the birth of Charles IV in 2016 and organizer of many cultural/social events. He is the initiator of the action www.zachrantevily.cz, where he is trying to hold accountable irresponsible developers who are letting the cultural heritage in Prague Bubenč deteriorate.
In his spare time, he enjoys his family, reading, especially Nordic detective novels and biographies of important personalities, playing chess and other games, walking in nature and sightseeing. Alternatively, he enjoys combining these hobbies – in nature, lying under a tree or in the shade of a castle courtyard, he reads or plays chess. He also likes to write articles and other texts, also for his private blog www.chrast.eu.