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Mirosław 'Maken' Dzięciołowski was the initiator of reggae sound systems in Polish People's Republic. In 1988 in small town Zgorzelec in Western Poland, together with Mariusz Dziurawiec, he founded Joint Venture Sound System - the first sound system in Poland. In the beginning, he played music from cassettes with a usage of two tape recorders. Reggae was very popular in Poland in the 1980s, especially after the boom on this genre in 1983, but parties with this kind of music were rare because of the shortage of albums and cassettes. 'Maken' presented a broad selection of Jamaican music (reggae, dub, ska) but sometimes he played new wave and punk music too. He was also an author and editor of a few fanzines in that decade. One of them was 'QQRYQ' to which Dzięciołowski was a regular contributor.

The genres such as dub and reggae, in which Dzięciołowski had a special interest, were a part of the alternative music scene dominated by hardcore punk. Many bands tried to mix the reggae sound with punk intensity. In Zgorzelec Dzięciołowski was a manager and sometimes a vocalist of the group Bush Doctor founded in 1985, which mixed styles of punk, reggae, ska, dub, funk, and rap. Musicians of the group were inspired by the crossover music of Bad Brains and Chumbawamba. The affinity between punks and rastas in the 1980s in Poland was perceived as something obvious; young people who presented an alternative mindset sought to get together with other outsiders. This punky-reggae community was regarded as the cultural and spiritual revolt alternative to the political opposition and to all political issues.

After the transition to liberal democracy, Dzięciołowski became one of the most prominent people on Polish reggae scene. He worked as a DJ, manager, journalist, editor, radio, and TV presenter, collaborating with music magazines 'Brum' and 'Plastik', Polish Radio, TVP Kultura (public broadcaster's theme channel dedicated to arts and culture), and Ostróda Reggae Festival.

As a contributor to 'QQRYQ' Dzięciołowski created many graphics and comics illustrating the fanzine. He was also a correspondent of Piotr 'Pietia' Wierzbicki and his colleague. Works by Dzięciołowski were distinctive features of 'QQRYQ' due to their sense of humour and characteristic nonchalant style.

Dzięciołowski was invested more in alternative music scene than in oppositional or dissent activities. He perceived the reggae music an alternative to the political opposition. However, living in a small town he did not have so much freedom as the underground youth in cities like Warsaw, Gdańsk, or Wroclaw, because of the unusual or even shocking image of reggae musicians and fans. Despite his reserve to political issues, as an alternative culture activist and author of a couple of fanzines, Dzięciołowski was in Zgorzelec under investigation of the secret police. In the small towns, young outsiders had also bigger problems with the social control than in the big cities.

Rudolf Dzurko was an artist of Roma origin who lived a substantial part of his life in the former Czechoslovakia. During that time, he was a relatively unknown artist until 1996 when the Revolver Revue awarded him its Prize and presented copies of his work to the general public. The originals could be seen by the public in 2002, when Dzurka made a great retrospective of the centre of Egon Schiele in Český Krumlov. In the catalogue of this exhibition, he wrote: "I have never wanted to do art and do not want to do it now. I do not consider myself an artist. Michelangelo, Leonardo, Gogh, these were my true artists. It seems to me, when I'm angry I will make a picture of how angry I am when I'm happy I will make the image sparkling, joyful and when I feel sadness, fear, anxiety, when the whole of Prague falls upon me and the city suffocates me, then I make pictures such as Violent Civilization."

 Dzurko was born in 1941 to the "Gypsy" community in eastern Pavlovice. After the war, he and his parents moved to northern Bohemia to replace the expelled and murdered Germans. There, in the vicinity of Nový Bor, he also first became acquainted with the glass shards there, which laid there as a waste after the glass production. He then began his first job, working as a bricklayer and as a metal turner. He began to exhibits his work in the 1970s, when he was invited to exhibitions such as The Art of Czechoslovak Gypsies or Our Fellow Gypsies. He then moved to Prague where he continued his work. After 1989, the National Gallery bought several of his paintings and today the value of his work is counted in millions. The Museum of Romany Culture also owns a relatively large collection.

Dzurko devoted himself to the world of Roma, their poverty and fantasy, foolishness and humanity as well as the search for their place. The paintings are very fragile in nature and he patented his original technique. In his work, he also devoted himself to the subject of communist power, for example, when he created the picture "The Devil (Communists) took a violin from a Gypsy." The painting originated in 1983. In his work, Dzurko captured the publication of the Czech-Roma dictionary, the racist attack of the arsonists in Vítkov in 2009 and the period of communism. He was incredibly aware of what the Communist regime had committed to the Roma people, especially as part of assimilation programmes. Dzurko himself also signed several sentences in a document developed by Charter 77 in the spring of 1989 and published June 29.

Iván Zoltán Dénes (1946) is a Hungarian historian. Between 1966 and 1971 he studied philosophy and history along with archival sciences (1971–1975) at the Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest. From 1973 to 1974, and between 1977 to 1998 he was a researcher at the Philosophy Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. From 1998 he worked at Debrecen University, and in 2001 he became the leader of the Political Theory and Policy History Department of the university. He is a member of the Academia Europaea in London since 1995. He was the founding president in 1996 of the István Bibó Intellectual Workshop. His principal area of research is Hungarian 19^th–20^th-century history of ideas (liberalism, conservatism, nationalism).

Art historian. He studied at ELTE, and from 1974 is museologist, from 1976 head of department at the Contemporary Hungarian Department of the Hungarian National Gallery (MNG). From 1987 to 2010, he was head of the Contemporary Collection. Beside his activity at MNG, he was site supervisor of five county museums between 1975 and 1988; artistic director of the Makó Graphic Workshop from 1978 to 1981; artistic director of the Újpest Gallery between 1986 and 1989; he taught art history at the journalism school of the National Association of Hungarian Journalists from 1986 to 1988; between 1990 and 1996 he was a member of the Advisory Board of Műcsarnok, Budapest; from 1992 to 1999 he was a member of the Mihály Munkácsy Prize Committee; since 1994 member of the Degree Examination Board of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts; since 1996 board member of the National Association of Hungarian Artists (MAOE). His field of research is 20^th-century Hungarian art. He has curated more than 100 exhibitions.