Since 2008, we have been inhabiting places for shorter and longer periods, but now we are embarking on a long-term process of creating a new place.
In Józsefváros, we have recently (from 2021) rented a workshop office in Karácsony Sándor utca together with KÖME – Cultural Heritage Managers Association. We have been trying to rent a municipally owned space for years, and now we have finally been successful in our bid and together with KÖME we have been awarded the vacant 143 m2 shop space at Népszínház u. 26 for 5 years. We are able to give up our office rented on market basis (though at a friendly price) and move to Népszínház in October 2023!
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quote from a text which we wrote about this placemaking experiment:
Népszínház street is located in the city center of Budapest, it is part of the 8th district but mentally it crosses much more diverse contexts. This multicultural street could well be a candidate for the title “folks’ street”, and this is not a historical coincidence. The street has always been an important artery of Budapest, serving as a gathering place for the rural and distant population that came to the capital from the 2nd half of the 19th century on, and as a home for merchants, artisans and artists. It connected the first main railway station with the city centre, the outside with the inside, the new with the old, the foreign with the other foreigner, the resident with the foreigner. The street was given its current name in the year after the unification of the city (in 1873), in connection with the great theatre project of the time, which was intended to reach out to a wide range of people and provide them with access to culture. Today, the street, deprived of its folk theatre and cinemas, is best known as the antechamber of the district’s ‘ghetto romanticism’. The local society became even more colourful in the 20th century when African and Asian migrants started to settle down in the neighbourhood. Since the turn of the millennium, an increasing gentrification makes the local dynamics and challenges even more complex.
The focus of the place-making process is the abandoned shop space at Népszínház Street 26. Thanks to the support of the Józsefváros Municipality, we can lease this space for the next 5 years. We aim to transform this space into an inclusive meeting point, a communication hub for Népszínház Street. Our goal is to go beyond conventional cultural representations and “safe spaces,” creating surfaces that can connect the most diverse people despite social fragmentation.
Read the reportage of the daily newspaper Népszava about our opening Népsziasztok! Placemaking Festival here (in Hungarian)
Join our facebook group NÉPSZÍNHÁZ!
More info about Népszínház micropark and the micropark project of Joseph Town here.