The cultural centre Stanica, situated in an old and still operational train station in Stanica Žilina-Záriečie, has since 2003 been an independent venue for creating links, an artistic laboratory and an activists’ collective.
Stanica would like to be a cultural node - creative, educative and critical. They illustrate the tale of a small train station where people stop when passing by and share their news and experiences from their travels.
They run a gallery, a workshop space, residency space for artists, a café, a waiting-room, and a multifunctional presentation venue for theatre, dance, concerts, discussions and screenings. There is also a huge outer space open to the public with a garden, park, summer stage, and a children’s playground.
There are several different children’s ateliers taking place almost every day each week, and there are on average two-three artistic events happening per week.
In 2009, thanks to the hard work of many young volunteers, the new venue S2 from beer crates and straw bales was created. The project of S2(2009) continues their activities in revitalization of the industrial land surrounding Stanica. The opening night of the new venue was on the 7th May 2009, a part of the Trans Europe Halles Meeting – a network of independent culture centres.
Stanica is not just the next cultural center in the town or region, but a platform for information, research, and realization of experimental art/cultural/community projects and international and inter-sector communication that relay activities to other institutions.
Director of Stanica is Marek Adamov. Most important personnel: Katarína Ďuricová, Peter Hapčo, Martin Krištof, Barbora Uríková, Hanka Hudcovičová Lukšů, Dušan Dobiaš, Andrej Hinka, Ints Plavnieks.