Summary in English

About us

Functional flaws of the established theatre system and the helplessness regarding the deficiencies of Hungarian  society stimulated the foundation of Utcaszínházi Alkotóközösség Association (Spec.Street Creative Community) in 2007. We follow a participatory, applied performing art practice: we involve the participants into various activities by the attraction of the stage and use theatre as a multi-faceted vehicle for education. The combination of performative and psychodynamic techniques proved to be exceptionally effective in personal and community competence development. According to man’s basic needs, in our work we try to balance therapeutic, social and creative substances. When we create a community and improve the participants’ mental health, we rely on a sort of instinctual theatre, which resides anthropologically in every human.

 

Past 

Utca-SZAK is a non-governmental, non-profit organisation active in the cultural – artistic/creative and educational – sector. Our activities are based on our urge for value creation, as of art and society, and the possible forms of pedagogical and developmental application of theatre. The scope of our work includes activities from the creation to the dissemination of theatre performances, DIE and TIE sessions, as well as related functions such as organising camps and festivals, art trainings, game sessions and capacity building courses. We have many years of experience in project management, mobility program coordination, volunteer management, artistic research and residencies, academic activities as research, scientific measurements with universities like ELTE, and organisation of international training academies.
Our activities are strictly non-market-oriented, our main supporters are UN, EACEA, Hungarian Ministry of Human Resources, OSI, Hungarian Cultural Fund, Social Renewal – and Human Resource Development Operational Programmes, Norwegian Fund, Erasmus+, International Visegrad Fund, MOL, Magnet Bank, Operetta Theatre Budapest, and other partners as theatres, primary, secondary and vocational schools, reformatory houses, prisons, drug rehabilitation institutions, municipalities, local and national NGOs.

Our projects mainly target the population of small villages, urban slums, rehabs, reformatory institutions and prisons. The empowerment of underprivileged youth is the most significant feature of our activities. The Hungarian child protection field awarded us the Ferenczi Medal for our activities in 2017, and the US Embassy gave us the Active Citizenship Award in 2012.
We have our broadest “base” in Borsod County: in Cserehát we even know the families of the villages and have an understanding of the kinship as well. There we help dozens of youngsters in their secondary school studies, and follow up their advancement to the labour market.

Our activities

There are 4 major areas of our activities: a) community building, b) performances, c) international projects, d) research.

a) As part of our complex integration and competence development program, we hold regular sessions in the poor neighborhoods of Northern Hungary. The program consists of 2 main elements:

• team-work: skills development with art and drama education tools. We hold sessions for different age groups, from kindergarten to secondary school. During the sessions, children can acquire new skills and develop their competences that help their development on individual and group level. They become more conscious of themselves, learn to collaborate, improve their communication skills, decision-making ability, empathy, sense of responsibility and conflict management. Our upper and secondary school groups process issues as addiction, violence, exclusion, career orientation, or even hopelessness.

• leadership training for the motivated youngsters participating in our high school groups. Our goal is to train youngsters who are capable of community action, to improve their sense of personal and civic responsibility, to motivate them, to support their career orientation, to develop their organizing, writting and oral skills,  and to “channel” them into higher education.

Each summer we organize a summer art camp for the children of Cserehát where new “shows” are put together. 

b) Performances: UtcaSzAK stages one new performance every year, usually dealing with social issues of contemporary life.

In 2016 our play on juvenile prostitute mothers called “Choir of Multiply Disadvantaged Angels” – based on DIE sessions of juvenile prisons and personal interviews of prostitutes – was selected among the best theatre performances of the year. 

c) International projects

In our pioneering Creative Europe project, EXCEPT (Exchange of Community-engaged Performing Arts Practices) we built an international network and shared, researched and implemented best practice delivery models in relation to social inclusion and cultural diversity.

https://exceptnet.eu

Between 2013 and 2018 we implemented 4 international training academies for social workers and artists with 17 applied art organizations and involved 120 participants from all over Europe and overseas. https://vimeo.com/246235522

Linked to these academies we organized 6 international youth camps in underprivileged areas, 4 international performing arts tours (Hungary, France, Italy, Poland) and 3 editions of the Made in Gypsistan Festival (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtbOIWSHz8Q) in 5 multiply disadvantaged villages of Borsod county (Szakácsi, Felsővadász, Homrogd, Abaújszolnok, Kázsmárk).

As members of the RIOTE network we experiment further possibilities for strengthening the society-art axis. Our role in this international community is to persuade performing artists to expose themselves to intercultural settings and involve challenging target groups into long term activities.

The core idea of UtcaSZAK’s projects is the educational force in connecting segregated communities with Hungarian and European artists and educators.

d) Research

We are the initiator of the Flow in Theatre Research, a worldwide new initiative of measuring the psychophysiology of actors and audience parallel.

http://overskudd.no/videos/2017/9/8/budapest-science-of-emotion