Sharing the Leeds Digital Innovation story in Brno

Barry Singleton (centre) represented Leeds at the Urbis Smart City Conference in Brno.

Barry Singleton of Nexus Leeds at the University of Leeds recently represented our city at the annual Urbis Smart Cities Meetup held in our Czech partner city Brno. In this guest blog, he shares his very personal take on what he learned and contributed during his visit.

About Brno

Brno is a city in the South Moravian Region of the Czech Republic. Located at the confluence of the Svitava and Svratka rivers, Brno’s population is approximately 403,000, making it the second-largest city in the Czech Republic after the capital, Prague.

Brno is a city of legends and myths reflected in its architecture, art and sculptures that you can discover dotted around the city. One of the most famous legends is about a dragon that used to attack the people of the city and their livestock. Walk through the archway under the Old Town Hall tower and you will see the Brno Dragon.

Why did I go to Brno?

Urbis Smart City Conference is a delightful combination of a trade fair and an exclusive conference programme which presented three main themes: cities and municipalities in the face of climate change, community resilience and health and future mobility. It’s held annually in June at the Brno Exhibition Centre, constructed for the Exhibition of Contemporary Culture in Czechoslovakia 1928, at which point the city of Brno gained the most modern and the largest exhibition centre in Central Europe.  The modernist architecture of the Brno Exhibition Centre manifested the new identity of Czechoslovak society with the spirit of modern ideas and technological progress, a spirit that remains hard coded into the psyche and aspirations of the people of Brno to this day. A progressive and ambitious city needs equally progressive and ambitious politicians, and there was an abundance of municipal leaders in Brno for Urbis.

Since 1991, Leeds and Brno have been city siblings with a focus on sharing best practices in local government and this partnership has enabled exchanges between cultural organisations and universities. The partnership was reaffirmed soon after Brexit and an updated memorandum of understanding was signed with opportunities for citizens of both cities to participate.

Yet, it was an entirely serendipitous collision at Urbis’ bigger brother, Smart Cities Expo World Congress, in Barcelona, between Jakub Rybar and myself, that sparked a conversation resulting in me being invited to Urbis in June 2025. Jakub and Beata (Bea) Zapletalova, my incredibly kind, supremely supportive and highly professional guides for my time in Brno, visited Leeds thanks to Leeds’ International Relations team in March. The return trip was too good an invitation to turn down, so I booked my return flights from Leeds/Bradford Airport to Prague to make the connecting train for an adventure in South Moravia.

Day 1 - Peach Tree Corners, Atlanta, Georgia and Brno’s Living Lab at Brno Exhibition Centre

With huge thanks to my trusty guides, Bea & Jakub, particularly their world class agenda planning skills, I was invited to join a private meeting between a visiting delegation from Peach Tree Corners and its Curiosity Labs, one of the newest and most forward-thinking cities in the USA, and a collection of dignitaries from Brno, South Moravia and Czech Invest, the organisation focused on encouraging international trade with Czechia.

It was a privilege to be able to listen and learn about the collaboration taking shape between Brno and Peach Tree Corners, in particular the work ongoing with Czech startup, Visioncraft. Peachtree Corners is a city located in Gwinnett County, Georgia, and is part of the Atlanta metropolitan area. Founded on July 1, 2012, it is the largest city in Gwinnett County, with a population of over 42,000 residents as of the 2020 census. Most notably, in the context of Smart Cities, Peach Tree Corners is home to a 3 mile, 5G enabled autonomous vehicle testing track making it a real world, living, breathing lab for testing and validating smart cities solutions.

The morning was dominated by engaging conversation and a convivial atmosphere, followed by lunch and an afternoon session with the same cast as above but with presentations from innovative Czech startups seeking to broaden their horizons and explore the possibility of following in Visioncraft’s footsteps into the USA via Peach Tree Corners. After the presentations, we were taken to Brno’s famous underground, disused water tanks and given a brief walking tour around some of the city’s tourist attractions.

Finally, as day turned to night, we were treated to a stunning meal at Bar Element, one of Brno’s coolest bar/restaurants, and had the opportunity to break bread and make more new connections with many of the key protagonists due to attend and present at Urbis during the following couple of days.

Days 2 & 3 - Urbis Smart Cities Conference: Participation and Takeaways

Settling into the impressive Rotunda for the opening keynote talks, an iconic space, we were treated to presentations from Jan Kubata, a former Czech diplomat and head honcho at Brno Exhibition Centre; a procession of Government ministers helped to frame the conference and finally we heard from Ugo Valenti, Cities & Society BU Director for Smart Cities World Congress. I was thankful for the translation service provided by the event organisers because, despite my best efforts on the train from Prague to Brno, a vocabulary of 10 Czech phrases was never going to be sufficient for comprehending what people were saying without translation.

My primary interest after the keynotes was to get around the exhibition halls to meet and speak with founders of Czech companies exhibiting at the event, and Jakub & Bea had lined up a packed agenda for me to throw me, myself and I into the Urbis experience. I gave a presentation about Nexus, recorded a podcast and participated in a panel discussion about Living Labs and Innovation ecosystems. It was a great opportunity to talk about the work Dennis Dokter is carrying out to create a digital twin of Nexus, to develop a proposition around Nexus-as-a-Testbed. Moreover, it was equally fortuitous to share the stage with domain subject experts like Scott Yurman (Peach Tree Corners), Georg Wuerffel (Digital Eentwicklung), Marie Zezulkova (BVV), Robert Pinkas (Visioncraft) and Jan Bizik (Seznam).

I left the venue with a pocket full of business cards and a brain brimming with conversations and connections made by roaming around the exhibition centre. Bea then whisked me across the city for a meeting with the CEO of JIC, a very well regarded and successful innovation agency founded in 2003 by the City of Brno together with the South Moravian Region and Brno universities.

Bea had arranged a tour of one of Brno’s famous ossuaries, perhaps one of the earliest examples of the circular economy known to humanity. In Persia, the Zoroastrians used a deep well for this function and they called it an ‘astudan’ – literally, “the place for bones.” Essentially, once the graves around St James’ church were full, they needed to create space for new burials and an ossuary was the answer. The energy inside the ossuary was both electrifying, palpable and a little alarming, and the cool temperature was a welcome break from the heat I experienced throughout my time in Brno. If skulls scare you then an ossuary tour is not for you!

It's not every day you close an exhibition with a reception in an actual castle, Spielberk, that sits proudly atop a distressingly steep hill (a hill that even the Swedes didn’t successfully climb as they tried to take the city over many Viking moons ago). Sipping Moravian wine from our lofty position above the city of Brno was the perfect end to what I can only describe as the perfect introduction to a city that will remain in my heart forever. 

Leeds & Brno: Shared Opportunities

Let’s talk about mass transit. Brno’s population is less than half the population of Leeds, yet they have a tram system that helps citizens navigate their city seamlessly alongside its bus networks. Our regional leaders could learn a lot from how Brno successfully implemented their mass transit system to enable urban mobility for more of its citizens to make it a smarter city.

Urban innovation is at the heart of Brno’s aspirations to punch above its weight on the international marketplace and it’s evident that the people of Brno are blessed with an entrepreneurial spirit that has flourished since the Velvet Revolution and the societal changes it brought to the country and its citizens.

Citizen participation and inclusive growth are not unique concepts to cities like Leeds and Brno, but it’s refreshing to see that our politicians, our universities and colleagues working in economic development share a philosophy that guides their attitude towards improving our cities inclusively.

From a Nexus perspective, I met a lot of company founders and ecosystem stakeholders who I believe can come together to solve societal problems, to enable innovative founders to test and validate their products and services for both their technological and their societal readiness. We have the ecosystems in place, and we have shared goals and objectives with which to deliver true innovation.

Brno’s location means it sits at the very heart of central Europe, a strategically perfect place for a thriving, ambitious city to excel and perform on the global stage. Blessed with stunning architecture from the distant past, remnants of the old regime are dotted around the city alongside several distinctly phallic symbols including the astronomical clock with a biological nickname. It felt incredibly safe walking around the city, albeit I always view the world through the lens of a gentleman who probably looks like they can look after themself. I was sad to leave Brno, the train ride back to Prague gave me ample time to reflect on figuring out when I will be able to return having only just scratched the surface of life in South Moravia.

South Moravians are fiercely proud of their wine, their mythology, their history, and their plans for a smarter and better-connected future for their citizens. Closer to Vienna and Bratislava than Prague, if you’re looking for an alternative place to explore I recommend you try Brno and I know you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.