The award, worth €50,000, will be dedicated to bringing the PerformanceBus project to life in Hungary. It originated in the Czech Republic as the creation of Studio Alta, Trafó’s Prague partner.
Back in Hungary, Trafó is dedicated to social issues and describes itself as a platform for establishing values and context and generating new ideas and productions. It offers a space for work by local and international artists.
Although Trafó focuses on the younger generation, its performances, concerts, exhibitions, and community and audience-building programs are accessible to all. It is unique in Hungary and a significant player in international contemporary arts.
“We’ve become an emblematic institution for the Budapest arts scene and an essential support structure for independent artists,” says curator, dramaturg and researcher Katalin Erdődi, Trafó’s director. “We’re also an important social forum where, through art, we can talk about the burning issues and changes that concern us, creating a safe public space where many different opinions and views can be voiced.”
Winning the European Arts Award will allow Trafó to launch PerformanceBus, a project that decentralizes its activities and enables the institution to travel outside Budapest.
Presented at the Arts and Audiences event in Paris on Dec. 12, 2024, the award encourages access to arts and cultures for everyone and champions new dialogs between the arts and audiences. It’s given to organizations working against social, economic and geographic barriers to offer access to the arts.
PerformanceBus was entered into category two of the European Prize, dedicated to cultural organizations with annual budgets of between EUR 500,000 and EUR 2 million.
Other initiatives in the category included France’s Terre de Culture with “Event 25: Living Trails,” the United Kingdom’s puppet “Suitcase Theater,” and the Notranjska Museum of Postojan, Slovenia’s “Museum for Rookies.”
Founded by entrepreneur Frédéric Jousset in 2019, Art Explora is an international foundation that inspires new encounters between arts and audiences locally, nationally and internationally. The organization works in partnership with artists, cultural organizations and communities.
The Académie des Beaux-arts (the French Academy of Fine Arts) is one of the five academies that make up the Institut de France (Institute of France). It promotes and supports artistic creation through all forms of expression.
Together with Studio Alta and supported by Art Explora, Trafó will devise three bus tours in the 2025/26 season. Planning will begin this spring, with the first tour in the fall.
Erdődi was appointed Director of Trafó in December 2023, starting her term officially in January this year.
“PerformanceBus was conceived by our partner Studio Alta. We share their view that the arts scene in small countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary tends to be highly centralized,” she says. “People often forget that the capital city doesn’t represent the whole country. Studio Alta wanted to venture beyond its physical boundaries, so they conceived the institution as an idea that can travel, discover the world outside its walls, and emphasize interconnectedness.”
Thanks to its relatively long history, Trafó has built a dedicated core audience, but, at present, its activities focus on Budapest.
“We feel it’s important to increase our outreach, to connect with younger generations as well as more diverse social groups in rural areas,” Erdődi says.
Trafó shifted the mission of PerformanceBus, adapting it to the local sociopolitical context and focusing more on sharing contemporary art in places lacking a cultural infrastructure and resources.
“We aim to work closely with artists now living in Budapest who grew up in the Hungarian countryside and are keen to reconnect with their local communities and share their work in the places they come from,” Erdődi tells me.
“This will be the starting point for planning the bus tours in Hungary as we can build on the local knowledge and social networks of the artists, making interventions more meaningful, locally embedded and personal,” she explains. “For us, PerformanceBus is a ‘vehicle of connection,’ a chance to devise epic journeys across the country, get to know new people and places and create moments of encounter and togetherness.”
For audiences, PerformanceBus will demonstrate that contemporary art can be thought-provoking, fun and liberating. Erdődi believes it will also be a vehicle for “resisting the lack of dialog and increasing polarization across rural and urban contexts that are dominant tendencies in Hungarian society,” she says.
“We’re currently searching for an interested bus rental company to partner with us. For us, the big question is how PerformanceBus continues after the three tours funded by the award. We will be searching for long-term partners for the future.”
Looking to that future, the main challenge is the state of the independent art scene, which has been hard hit by cultural budget cuts and existential uncertainty in the past year.
“The government has been reducing the operational and project funding dedicated to this field,” Erdődi explains.
For Émilie Boucheteil, head of public and community engagement at France’s Art Explora, its mission is to “put audiences at the heart of everything we organize or program. We want to enable art for all. This means building connections across communities and cultures, fostering dialog and understanding to enhance social cohesion and inclusion and encouraging greater civic engagement and democratic involvement. PerformanceBus fits perfectly with our mission.”
Art Explora prizes support innovative projects from small to big cultural organizations that can be shared, valued, replicated and scaled, and to encourage best practices.
“PerformanceBus convinced the jury because we were really impressed by the way the project responds to ongoing political changes in Hungary and shrinking access to critical and contemporary culture,” adds Boucheteil.
Find out more at trafo.hu/en and artexplora.org
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of March 7, 2025.
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