Situation review
Hungary is undergoing a moral and therefore cultural crisis. Compared to its state prior to the Second World War, society is resigned when power humiliates, represses, or shuts out, concrete social groups or their representatives. The overwhelming part of members of Hungarian citizenry most active in elections vote for parties which campaign using extreme rhetoric and govern with antidemocratic tools. The majority of Hungarian citizens are glad that a fence is being built anew at the border, that people fleeing from war are deprived of their human rights, that people of Roma origins are put to forced labour, that in Parliament men perpetrate verbal violence against female representatives, that in the same place homosexuality is subject to laughter, that anyone can be accused of anything, anywhere, and for any reason, that their personal rights can be taken for nothing, that false news can be disseminated with the state’s support, in accordance with the government’s aims. This indeed is proof that Hungary is in cultural crisis. In accordance with the desires of officialdom Hungary grows barbaric, and loses its civilised character. Citizens possess increasingly little relevant information, are increasingly uninformed, have increasingly little autonomy, but instead can be influenced, can be directed; can be incited at will against any individual, social group, civil organisation or institution labelled an enemy.

By culture we mean not the assembly of art forms, or the scope of interest in them, but the state of society, its attitude, reflexes, and relations. Culture means the level of civilisation itself, power relations, the state’s structural setup, and the interpersonal relationships of citizens. Culture is the foundation of the economy’s functioning, of constitutional structures and of human rights, that is of open society. If we do not cultivate culture, don’t develop it, then we have nothing to build on, nothing to demand, nothing to respect. If fundamental cultural knowledge does not comprise part of the obligatory school education, then there’s no sense in expecting growing generations to transform a Hungarian society in crisis. Youths who possess no consequential experience in orienting themselves in public affairs in some cases cannot even manage an entrance exam, not to speak of electoral participation.

At the same time they adapt very quickly to conditions harmful to them. He who lacks culture does not miss democracy, transparency, tolerance, solidarity, subsidiarity, freedom of press, freedom of speech, human rights, and judicial protection. She who lacks culture is not bothered by corruption, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and so on. The uncultured person doesn’t even understand these words, and thereby also doesn’t understand the phenomena these words signify. The consequence of a lack of culture is everything perceptible in Hungary today.

How can we lead, how can we complete undertakings, how do we obtain and how do we share information, how do we learn and teach, how do we ask for help and how do we give it? In our interpretation the basis of all human activity and of community is culture: how we celebrate, how we grieve, how we build houses and how we receive strangers.

We first encounter culture in our family, through our circle of friends and acquaintances, but it is between the walls of a school that we gain truly profound and sustained experience of it. We gain cultural insights even in educational systems which do not regard the holistic interpretation of culture as their task at all. Even the world’s worst school teaches culture: the culture of distrust and aggression. Every political system produces its own public education, and thereby determines the culture codes it regards as examples for its citizens to follow. If we are dissatisfied with a community’s culture we must re-write these culture codes, and early enough, among children: in the nursery, in kindergarten, and in school.

Even before 2010 governments did not concern themselves with the cultural state of society. For a fleeting moment after the fall of Communism the elevation of politics’ cultural standard was on the agenda. Today however there are neither checks nor balances; the causing of damage is unbounded. The current government media, thanks to its dominance, directs public discourse as its prevailing interests demand. The news tell us not about genuine problems and phenomena but what the government, or the political elite ruling the country, desires. To all intents and purposes there is no autonomous public discourse, because the independent media and anti-governmental intelligentsia also react according to the intentions of the group in power. The foremost proof of our lack of culture is that we are led by our noses, we do not have our own issues, subjects, agendas. They have imprisoned the citizens: the people. 

References
The Krétakör Foundation, with Árpád Schilling’s leadership, has been searching for almost ten years now for possible answers to the cultural crisis. We see several possibilities from the methodological perspective; the foundation was active as an initiator in each of these fields, and helped facilitate various processes.

1. Forum – “Without a break” conference, 2012
On the closing day of the 43 rd Hungarian Film Review, we organised a conference titled “Without a break in the interest of Hungarian culture” in the OSA Archive. We tried to produce an overarching panorama by inviting leading thinkers and professionals decisive in cultural fields to speak. The conference sought answers to the various crisis-symptoms and emphasised standing up against the amortization of cultural life.

2. Protecting interests – FESZ, 2011-13
In 2011 the Independent Association of Performing Arts (Független Előadó-művészeti Szövetség – FESZ) was re-established on Krétakör’s initiative; moreover we undertook the costs of operating the office, helped the daily work of the secretariat, and coordinated policy debates as well as discussions about interest protection (dissolution of operating subsidies, changes to TAO, MMA affair, reorganisation of NKA.) The foundation urged action against the centralisation of the cultural subsidy system. The association’s outstanding professional event was the Performing Artist World Day, which was organised on several occasions.

3. Activism – HP, 2012
In 2012 the Krétakör Foundation established the Human Platform society, which organised its first demonstration on December 17, 2012, alongside the many thousand-strong student demonstrations. The Human Platform conducted almost continuous watchdog activities: it surveyed events touching on culture and education in the 2010-2014 period (legislative changes, emblematic pronouncements, professional/organisation, demonstrations). It aimed to unite individuals and civil and professional organisations working in health, culture, education and the social sphere; and it set as its goal the mediation and protection of professional values, the improvement of human quality of life, and the strengthening of societal solidarity. The Human Platform’s development made it possible for it to continue operation from the beginning of 2015 as an independent body.

4. Demonstration – “See the Person”, 2016
In September 2016 the Hungarian government launched a campaign against the European quota system and set up a popular vote to stop migrants. In response to this Krétakör, together with several local civil organisations, organised a demonstration titled See the Person! in Budapest, to bring attention to the hardship of refugees fleeing war for Europe, and to the inhumanity of the referendum. The several week-long “See the Person!” campaign, as well as the September 30, 2016 demonstration and the artistic performance titled Testimony was realised through the cooperation of Róbert Alföldi, Péter Horgas, Árpád Schilling, and eight Hungarian civil organisations.

5. Campaign – “Real national consultation”, 2017
With our online #realnationalconsultation (#igazinemzetikonzultáció) selfie campaign, launched spring 2017, we strove to offer citizens an alternative to the pseudo-questions of the national consultation. Of the six questions two pertained directly to civil organisations linked to the refugee crisis and/or financed from abroad, and questioned their genuine goals and legitimacy. We asked people, instead of ‘Stopping Brussels or the civil organisations facilitating illegal migration,’ to articulate the problems genuinely affecting them. The majority of the questions submitted concerned the state of education, healthcare, pensions and corruption in Hungary. This way we could determine genuine social problems; in a video series we asked acknowledged specialists about possible solutions to them.

6. Network-building – Civilization, 2017
Since the beginning of February we have helped build up the Civilization campaign, which is the biggest joint civil effort of the past years. Its original goal was blocking the law – accepted by Parliament in June 2017 – “on the transparency of organisations supported from abroad”. We took part in designing the strategy, and since its incipience help communication through the involvement of press and communication specialists. Between March and June 2017 the Civilization group articulated positions and organised multiple public demonstrations and a protest in relation to the law. In three months we succeeded in making Civilization a well-known national and international campaign, owing to the active contribution from five-six organisations including the foundation.

7. Média – +1, 2015
PlusOne was the Krétakör Foundation’s public life program, which in fall 2014 produced nine broadcasts in total. The program sought, before the local government elections, to answer whether Budapest could be the common city of two million people, if social differences (e.g. housing deprivation) are growing, discrimination becomes increasingly visible, and the public does not see the city as its own.

8. Education – Free School, 2013-16
In 2013 we began an educational activity titled Free School with the aim of sensibilising people regarding basic democratic values and advancing social dialogue. The three year groups were occupied with examining the political systems characterising democratic societies, with the questions of housing deprivation and homelessness, and with the problems of migration and the refugee crisis. By 2016 almost 200 middle school students from more than 40 different schools in Budapest, rural Hungary, and across the border, took part in the programs. Students completing the program led discussion forums and street art actions for their peers, participated in the theatrical production titled The Party, which also toured in two European festivals – in Brussels and Göteborg – led city walks and created a guerrilla street poster campaign. Passing on our experiences in planning and executing these campaigns, as well as in the use of multimedia tools, is important to developing the democratic toolkit. In addition these tools are attractive and motivating for youths under 18 years old.

In 2016, in recognition of its cultural activities and democratic exertions, the Krétakör Foundation received the European Cultural Foundation’s prestigious decoration: the Princess Margriet Award. The ECF jury highlighted among other things Krétakör’s successful transition from a theatrical company into a social forum, in which people discuss questions they would otherwise have no opportunity to. Thereby they question not only their own preconceptions, but can become the kind of critical, self-aware members of society which bifurcated Hungary and Europe particularly need.

Proposal
The fact of the cultural crisis and the damage caused are obvious, but we do not yet see how deep we are, since we are still falling. Most might be done against the crisis with a coordinated state action program. But in Hungary in the decade ahead of us there is no chance of that. The government’s interest is precisely that cultural standards enduringly do not rise, since its politics are supported by the low intellectual standard and the attitude derived from it, and vice versa. It is impossible to maintain an organisation which accomplishes wide-spread cultural rehabilitation and innovation solely through Hungarian donations. The direct consequence of cultural states is that communal self-preservation is still in its infancy in the whole region. The support of friends is insufficient for a long-term program. It’s a fingerprint of the economic sector’s unculturedness that Hungarian firms, with few exceptions, do not even grasp the importance of culture; and when they do, because of the protectionist environment they do not own up to their sympathies with cultural standpoints in opposition to the government, nor materially aid change to a sufficient degree. Foreign donors and strategy partners are needed to establish a well-founded, ever-expanding cultural movement sustainable even in the long run.

Since state institutions have nothing to gain from cultural innovation and the development of the public’s cultural state, we must find independent solutions, so we can reach citizens as effectively as possible and show them an alternative. We need to produce situations in which a growing number of citizens articulates to themselves the kind of cultural environment they imagine, and can experience it as a practical reality. We need to practice behavioural forms divergent from the current mainstream attitude, to follow models opposite to the officially expected. In the present conditions of cultural crisis only a cultural movement can pull the country out. By a cultural movement we mean one which reaches the critical mass scale, that is has several thousand active members, which move forward in accordance with the movement’s own agenda, organise their public lives, live and represent democracy, human rights, the cultured, civilised human existence. This is not a party but a movement, which would appear in the everyday, outside parliament, and spanning the entire electoral cycle. Through the movement we might lay the foundations of a modern constitutional process, of online public voting, and the knowledge necessary for law-making; the movement might give strength to the independent online media, to civil organisations; the movement might promote a series of collaborations, and being informed professionally; in time the movement might give new momentum to the transformation of political life; elections and public votes too would gain new life from such a movement.

The Krétakör Foundation regards it as its principal mission to impart positive cultural experiences to school-age youth. Our task: that a growing number of young people make their own a tolerant, accepting attitude, become sensitive to other people’s suffering. That they inform themselves judiciously, have opinions, and dare assume them publically. That they be cooperative, interested in the things of the world, of communities unlike their own, and use their knowledge, their experience, creatively. That they respect humanity’s achievements so far, relate mindfully to nature, and accepts that what our world becomes – where we all end up – is their responsibility too. For the Krétakör Foundation culture is the basis of everything, and it tries to ensure the growing generation recognises this as early as possible. The most important constituent of learning is practice. The more a youth can live through more than once that the result of his exertions is a well-functioning community, in which he too feels at home, the more this thinking becomes a part of his everyday. Positive thinking, an enterprising stance, and an accepting attitude must become the habits of youth. Habit is culture itself; as more people repeat appropriate exercises, it can become a pattern just like the currently palpable aggressive and ignorant anti-culture. We act rightly when we place as many youths as possible in cultural networks, through which we can make fashionable the achievements of civilisation’s newest age. The Krétakör Foundation’s proposal is to create amidst the present distorted and unlivable conditions the basis of a cultural youth movement.

Organising and launching a movement is also the work of years. The Krétakör Foundation is making a suggestion for the first step of a long-term program, to persuade thereby its possible strategic partner, the Open Society Foundation.
 

Work Plan

• 1 st phase, 2017 September-December (4 months)
  Team, Partners, Planning, Organising, Activity

By the end of September 2017 the specialist team participating in the realisation is assembled. The project’s artistic director: Árpád Schilling. The Foundation and project’s managing director: Dóra Papp. The project’s financial manager: Andrea Vajdané Keresztessy. Continuously advertised positions from September 2017:

(a) Assistant to the managing director
(b) Assistant to the financial manager
(c) Public stakeholders manager. Tasks: communications with locations and partners; may represent the project publically.
(d) Camp manager. Tasks: communications with teachers and students (by the end of 2018, approximately 1000 individuals); may represent the project publically.
(e) Press relations
(f) Social media manager
(g) Documentary director
(h) Activity leader – TIE specialist
(i) Three activity performers (drama teachers-actors)

From the end of September we will start to involve possible participants in the project’s initiation. We would definitely seek out: Tanítanék Mozgalom (‘I Would Teach’ Movement), Kettős Mérce (‘Double Standard’), Közös Ország (‘Common Nation’), ARC (magazine), Polgár Alapítvány (Citizen Foundation), Civil organisations, including Civilization; methodological workshops, including Káva Cultural Workshop, Kerekasztal (‘Round Table’) Theatre Education Centrer, parties, online firms, media partners: ATV/Klubrádió/RTL.

During the preparatory phase we will also seek supporting partners in locations, housing, catering. From October the detailed elaboration and testing of the professional program begins:

1. Planning – October
(a) mission, work schedule
(b) milestones and deadlines
(c) work allocation, clarification and harmonisation of tasks

2. Organisation/Set-up – November-December
(a) preparing online systems (home page, blog, facebook, etc)
(b) contacting and coordination with teachers
(c) locations for the January-May 2018 period
(d) location for the camp in August 2018
(e) finding and coordinating partners

3. Activity – October-December
(a) clarification of core concepts
(b) pedagogical and theatrical frameworks for the activity
(c) task for the activity in the movement
(d) research, devising, experimentation
(e) two rehearsals for professional audiences in December

• 2nd phase, January-July 2018
  Activities, network-building, PR, camp preparation

1. Activities A. and B. are realised after one another in individual locations (January-May is 5 months, 2x20 activities)

(A.)

- an interactive theatrical activity combining various used practical/applied theatrical forms (e.g. TIE, Forum theatre, Argument/Discussion theatre)
- 5 high schools in Budapest, 5 in other cities, 10 in small towns
- c. 600 students
- c. 20 pedagogues
- the subject: fake news, how we inform ourselves, online media, what we believe and why, what harm we can cause, and receive; what it means to provide information in a democracy, what transparency means, what we should do with trolls, etc.
- recordings are made of the activity, which will be posted online
- the activity inspires students, pedagogues, participants and all the followers of the project to provide their email addresses, so we can inform them of initiatives in which they can participate.

(B.)

- We return once more to every participating group
- This activity again generates personal interaction between students and participant pedagogues
- They receive feedback about their online communication, can ask questions, voice opinions

2. Network-building (January-July is 7 months, min. 20,000 followers, min. 500 active members – students, teachers, parents, supporters)
The goal of this phase of work is to consolidate the interest provoked in regard to the work. We offer appropriate online participation opportunities/activities for the various target groups. Activities:

- Students taking part in the activity can analyse and evaluate 2018 electoral manifestos with video commentaries and various interactive situations, as well as the results of the elections (closed online space, with codes)
- We track the activity of students participating in the activity and therefore possessing codes, and follow them personally through their teachers – we do not compel students who show no interest in the opportunities offered through the online interface to participate; it is the task of pedagogues to make this clear to the students.
- We offer the opportunity to take part in the camp to students participating in the activity and also active in online communication
- We offer all students online services – application possibilities, work opportunities, international scholarships, electoral advice based on simple tests and statistics – self-service system, everyone chooses for themselves
- We offer all adult citizens online services; insofar as we publicise opinions related to party programs and positions regarding elections – we make no judgments, but merely list arguments, and moderate them
- We also offer the option to take part in the camp to the most active followers, supporters

3. Camp preparation (January-July, 7 months)

- Accomodation and catering for 500 people
- Camp program development
- Selection and contracting of staff directing, designing, implementing the Camp’s programs
- Community fund-raising program for Camp costs (March-August, min. target 10 million HUF)
- Recruitment and preparation of volunteers to organise and operating the Camp (min. 20 people)
 

• 3. Phase, August 2018

Camp – min. 4 days, max 7 days (the budget assumes 5 days; this may change if additional funds are available). For technical reasons it’s important to limit the headcount, which is why we choose a camp rather than festival format.)
Program:

- One thematic forum daily (migration; education; national/EU/global sphere; media; nuclear energy; culture!)
- Interactive live games
- Student theatre performances
- Concerts
- Thematic exhibitions
- Participants create something together, which becomes public at the end of the camp
- Camp media (with student involvement)
- Environmental awareness, green energy, self-driving cars, robotics
- Video games, comics….
- Solidarity, blood donation
- Civil organisations, volunteering, aid organisations
- During the Camp we select people with whom we can initiate the movement’s development in September 2018, who will become the movement’s first members (min. 50 people)
 

• 4 th phase, September-December 2018

- Follow-up on the camp (for everyone, not just those who were selected)
- The foundation establishes the movement (min. 50 people)
- Organisation of the movement’s meetings (at least two monthly, transport of volunteer members)
- Elaboration of the movement’s program
- Planning the movement’s community fund-raising
- First solidarity action campaign of the movement: November-December
- Movement’s solidarity action in December 2018

• January 2019 – The movement goes live
• PR activities continuous alongside the activities and preparation of the camp (January-December 2018)

- Intensive online presence
- Campaign 1 (March-August) – linking up the activities, the online and the camp – the camp’s financing is realised through community fundraising
- Campaign 2 (September-December – worked out together with the movement’s members) – the movement’s first solidarity campaign
- Campaign 3 (September-December) – working out the campaign for financing the movement – launched January 2019
- Live programs
- Forum
- Workshop
- Flash mob
- Simple volunteer activity

The program deals with preparations for launching a cultural movement from September 2017 to December 2018. This comprises 40 activities, the camp, and the
communications campaigns. The funds necessary to realise the program are not
currently available.

The entire budget is some 19.5 million HUF for 2017, and 107.9 million HUF for 2018. Of this the Krétakör Foundation undertakes to raise 10 million HUF through the organisation of community fundraising campaigns, and 8 million HUF through the participation fees specified for camp expenses (400 people, 20,000 HUF per person). If the funds to cover these expenses are not available, the number of activities and of participants in the camp can be reduced – in this cases the contribution undertaken is reduced proportionally. A 30-40% reduction is possible in the program budget; in the case of less support the program is not feasible.

The Krétakör Foundation sees the program outlined above as the first step in a long-term strategy to create the necessary embeddedness at both the national and regional levels. The process initiated with the help of the Open Society Foundation could make Krétakör a leading cultural foundation, which in addition to the movement concept already outlined can be the host, facilitator, and supporter of countless campaigns and programs. Our aim is to become permanent and leading actors. We are working to construct an extensive network which, through its cooperation, builds a supporter base to ensure its independent operation in the long run.

The Krétakör Foundation has operated since 2015 without state subsidy, from project-based local and international support. The future of our social workshop is in question – a direct consequence of the democratic crisis perceptible in Hungary. We spent the last near-10 years largely interpreting causes of the crisis, predicting the consequences, searching for exemplar solutions and mobilising society. In addition to the foundation’s experience, diverse programs, and successes, it is the planning processes reflecting on the difficulties and obstacles of practical realisation which make it possible for Krétakör, among cultural institutions, to offer innovative solutions first: we direct attention to the seriousness of social problems and aim to increase the social utility of our work.

The realisation of the proposed program also means the survival of the Krétakör Foundation.

Dóra Papp, Árpád Schilling