The UHK Guide – The first Czech University video guide in English
The UHK Guide is the name of a brand new programme created by the University of Hradec Králové in an attempt to promote the University of Hradec Králové abroad in a witty and fun way. Our greatest inspiration lies in a popular programme called Honest Guide created by Honza Mikulka and Janek Rubeš. It was made for internet-based Stream Television (now Seznam News). While Honest Guide focuses mainly on our capital city and provides international tourists with useful information, our UHK Guide is primarily conceived so as to make international students want to study at our University while at the same time providing young people who are already our students with more information about the University and with news and ideas that may be of interest and use to them.
As things stand today in the Czech university environment, it is a project that is unique and one of a kind. The project was first and foremost mainly supported by Karel Kouba, UHK Vice-Rector for International Affairs. He noted that the project has great potential and he decided to stand in for it. So, together with our colleagues from the various foreign affairs departments, who are in closest contact with incoming international students, and who thus have first-hand intel on the problems they face, we put together a list of topics that it would be good to cover and a possible layout of the individual episodes. The team working on the sequel is then made up almost only of UHK students. Matyáš Strnad and Josef Ležák, students of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Hradec Králové, prepare the script for the individual episodes. Their witty nature lends the programme just the right dose of humour. Vojtěch Šmolík takes us through the individual episodes. He is both a postgraduate student from the UHK and a representative of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Hradec Králové. František Hašek, a student of the Faculty of Informatics and Management, helped us with recording the second episode. Lenka Badinská, a member of the Department of Foreign Affairs of the University of Hradec Králové, also lent a helping hand in the production of the programme.
We also have to mention Martin Brus (Faculty of Informatics and Management, UHK) without whom our work would only be half of what it is today. Martin is in charge of camera, editing and colour correction and it is mainly thanks to him that our video guide meets almost professional technical standards.
The freedom to create at liberty that has been bestowed on us by UHK management is, in actual fact, the most important part of the puzzle when it comes to the process as a whole – It is thanks to the trust invested in us that we can be creative, express ourselves, and attract more and more new viewers from all over the world to each and every episode.
Viewer response was at its highest right after the first episode went viral and after it had been promoted. Lots of students contacted us via Messenger (Facebook) and they sent us e-mails telling us that they had seen the video and that they would like to learn more about our University. So far, no other university has launched any such similar project and so we have succeeded in filling a gap in the market and attracting international students that would otherwise have no other way of finding out about the University of Hradec Králové.
If you have missed out on the UHK Guide, either check out our English Facebook site the University of Hradec Kralove or go to our YouTube channel. We would very much appreciate you sharing the UHK Guide with friends and family abroad.
