How can a theatre be, at the same time, a community space, a sustainable urban experiment, a meeting point, and a guardian of Erzsébetváros’s stories?
The community cultural event organised by Pro Progressione and the Municipality of Erzsébetváros, as part of the LIFE Bauhausing Europe project and as a satellite programme of the New European Bauhaus Festival, places the reimagining of the Bethlen Square Theatre and its surroundings at the centre. We invite you to join us for two days where art, sustainability, urban stories, and community participation come together.
The aim of the event is to bring visitors closer to the transformation of the Bethlen Square Theatre, as well as to the shared thinking that supports the creation of a more liveable, inclusive, and environmentally conscious urban environment.
Throughout the day, we welcome everyone with open, all-day programmes and guided events: local residents, students, artists, professionals, families, and anyone curious about the hidden stories and future possibilities of Erzsébetváros.
You can take part in a clothing and plant swap; bring your own mug as part of our efforts to reduce waste; discover the results of the LIFE Bauhausing Europe and Performing Landscapes projects through a mini-exhibition; and try out our board game, Spaces for Future, in which you can explore what life on Earth might look like in the next century.
As part of the programme, guided by Dávid Somló, we will explore the most hidden corners of the Bethlen Square Theatre. You will also have the chance to talk with the architects working on the theatre’s renewal, focusing on the architectural, environmental, and community aspects of the building’s transformation. In addition, a special map-based walk presenting the spaces of Bethlen will help you look at the theatre and its human stories from a new perspective.
The artistic performances and workshops all serve the same purpose: to think together about how culture can become one of the driving forces of sustainable urban change.
This event is not only a presentation, but also an invitation: to connect, to engage in dialogue, to create together, and to imagine a more liveable, greener, and more community-centred future for Erzsébetváros — and within it, for Bethlen.
Come along, bring your own mug, a plant or piece of clothing to swap, and discover the new stories of Bethlen and its surroundings with us!
Detailed programme
June 11
10:00 Opening
15:00 – 16:00 Horváth Florencia – Karádi Gergő: Actually No One
What happens when a poet and a songwriter enter into dialogue with one another? For them, the lesson is clear: personal experiences become universal, and creative worlds become boundless. Within the relationship between literature, music, and theatre, neither of them can remain merely who they appear to be according to their author biographies. They are capable of transforming into one another, of embodying different figures from the other’s life, and even of changing places while still remaining themselves.
Actually No One creates a universe based on Horváth Florencia’s poetry collection Hiátus, from which Karádi Gergő has set several texts to music. Anyone who enters the space becomes part of it through the interaction of text, music, and visuals. As the performance explores the absence of a mother figure, audience members separated from the stage are also confronted with a void that they may recognize in their own lives. In this case, however, it is not the absence itself that truly matters, but what one does with it.
15:00 – 18:00 our garden / this space is ours
Performative Material Workshop
Closing event of the Performing Landscapes project
Our Garden is a collective, performative creative process that explores the relationship between body, material, and space, using the triangular form as a starting point. During the workshop, participants work with various materials and techniques — textiles, ceramics, cardboard, and their own bodies as tools for sensing and shaping space.
At the heart of the programme are shared attention, presence, and the practice of “radical care and listening.” The creative process does not focus on producing a finished object, but rather on the process through which individual and collective perception, movement, and material use become connected.
The triangular form represents connection: relationships between people, bodies, materials, and natural elements. It also refers to the shapes of certain green surfaces and structures in the space where the programme takes place. Plants and plant forms also appear throughout the workshop as organic inspirations and starting points for perception.
The workshop functions as an imaginary journey: an attempt to reconnect with ourselves and with the state in which, as children, we had not yet separated ourselves from nature. Through the shared work, perception, intuition, and dialogue with materials come to the fore, creating the possibility for a slower, more attentive, and more connected creative experience.
18:30 – 20:30 Dávid Somló: Cracking the Space
Cracking the Space is a playful, participatory sensory workshop that seeks to break down and then reassemble the experience of the renewed spaces of the Bethlen Square Theatre. Through exercises involving attention, movement, and spatial perception, participants experience the fresh, crisp spaces, while shifts in perspective, unusual situations, and reinterpretations of perception disrupt familiar patterns of presence. In this way, the workshop opens up the possibility of connecting to a new space, while also becoming a non-verbal community experience.
As a maximum of 25 people can participate in the workshop, please indicate your intention to attend via the following link:
Registration: https://forms.gle/wpf1ZH3ujamTZD7M8
June 12
10:00 – 12:00 The Book of Dreaming book launch — children’s activity
The Book of Dreaming is a special participatory programme in which Ukrainian children present their own stories, thoughts, and dreams through a book they created together. The book about Budapest is an unconventional guidebook: it presents the city from the children’s point of view, through personal experiences, observations, imaginary stories, and their own perspectives.
During the two-hour event, participants can gain insight into the process of creating the book, as well as learn about the creative and community-based methodology developed and led by the London-based artist duo Andy Field and Beckie Darlington. The programme is at once a book launch, a community encounter, and an inspiring conversation about children’s imagination, connection to the city, and the power of storytelling.
The event is open to all age groups and warmly welcomes everyone interested in how children see Budapest, and how they can become creators of their own stories and visions of the future.
16:00 – 19:00 Sewing workshop
This time, the Pinkponilo team is moving into green spaces and sewing with you outdoors.
We were inspired by the internet’s “sewing in extreme places” videos to free sewing from apartments, boxes, and procrastination. We are no longer waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect equipment, or the perfect weather.
Bring your T-shirt, top, or any item of clothing, and let’s transform it together:
● make your own patch
● sew on yarn, buttons, and textiles
● screen-print slogans onto it — we are preparing “Budapest your regimes”
● leave a mark on the fabric
● connect with others and communicate through a textile installation
During the workshop, participants will create a large-scale embroidered textile image together. Standing on either side of the stretched textile, participants pass the needle to one another, its back-and-forth movement connecting gestures and people. The final image gradually emerges from the different coloured threads and the rhythm of the shared work.
The workshop is led by a coordinator who supports collaboration and guides the creative process. The aim of the programme is not only to create a collective textile artwork, but also to strengthen connection, communication, and the community experience through craft-based creation.
The phrase “Budapest your regimes” will appear pre-drawn on the textiles, and participants will embroider it together. The areas around the text can be freely shaped by participants with different motifs, stitches, words, and textile elements, so that individual traces and spontaneous gestures also appear alongside the shared form in the final work.
The past few months have been quite intense in this country. Now, beneath the leafy trees, we will sew, talk, connect, and reshape together everything we bring with us.
16:00 – 19:00 Hajgató Sári – HelloBotanika plant-painting workshop
Interactive watercolour workshop with dye plants
In this informal session, participants can paint greeting cards, small pictures, or gift tags on premium watercolour paper using colourful inks extracted from plants.
They can discover the magical colouring power of plants, try out playful ways of modifying colours, and, while expressing their creativity, gain new knowledge about wild-growing, cultivable, and kitchen-waste dye plants. This awareness-raising workshop offers an opportunity to acquire new knowledge while also providing creative relaxation, bringing the plants in our environment into a new perspective.
The activity is suitable for all ages, runs in approximately 20-minute sessions, and everyone can take home the small paintings they create.
16:30 – 18:00 The New European Bauhaus in Hungary – Roundtable Discussion
The New European Bauhaus (NEB) is an initiative of the European Union aimed at ensuring that the green transition of our built environment and beyond is livable, attractive, and affordable for all European citizens. This initiative supports solutions and projects that are not only sustainable but also inclusive and aesthetically pleasing, while respecting the diversity of European traditions and cultures.
To explore how this initiative is taking shape in Budapest and Hungary, we’ll be speaking with experts in architecture and community building who are familiar with domestic NEB projects and the NEB system.
Participants:
Krisztián Tóth and Veronika Vivas (architects responsible for planning the renovation of the Bethlen Square Theater as part of the LIFE Bauhausing Europe project)
Balázs Humayer (technical director of the AHA Budapest project)
Kovács Krisztina, KÉK curator, staff member of AHA Budapest
Moderator:
Fruzsina Dézsi (head of the Green Pillar at Pro Progressione)
18:30 – 20:30 Dávid Somló: Cracking the Space
Cracking the Space is a playful, participatory sensory workshop that seeks to break down and then reassemble the experience of the renewed spaces of the Bethlen Square Theatre. Through exercises involving attention, movement, and spatial perception, participants experience the fresh, crisp spaces, while shifts in perspective, unusual situations, and reinterpretations of perception disrupt familiar patterns of presence. In this way, the workshop opens up the possibility of connecting to a new space, while also becoming a non-verbal community experience.
Creative collaborator: Péter Mendel.
As a maximum of 25 people can participate in the workshop, please indicate your intention to attend via the following link:
Registration: https://forms.gle/wpf1ZH3ujamTZD7M8
Ongoing programmes on both days
Board game corner – gallery
Outdoor exhibition
Bethlen Stories – discover Bethlen’s stories with the help of QR codes and your mobile phone!
The festival is organized as part of the LIFE Bauhausing Europe project, co-funded by the LIFE programme of the European Union.
Photographs and audio recordings will be made at the event. Participants acknowledge that they may appear in the photographs and audio recordings taken at the event as visitors and consent to the organizers’ use of such recordings in connection with their own activities. Participants may not make any claims against the organizers, the creators of the recordings, or any other parties using the recordings under any valid legal grounds in connection with such use of the recordings.