Second international meeting of “PhotoKICK” project partners in Budapest

On April 19-20, 2023, the second international project meeting of the Erasmus+ project “Photography Kaleidoscope: Inclusion, Communities, and Knowledge” took place in Budapest, Hungary.

The meeting marked the halfway point of the project’s activities, so the program devoted a lot of attention to discussing already achieved project results, getting ideas and inspiration for future project activities – the preparation of guidelines for creating educational photography exhibitions and the development of the program of educational photography exhibitions.

The workshops of the meeting took place in historical places – the Hungarian National Museum and Bródy House, a 19th century palace closely associated with Budapest’s art community.

The first day started with a short educational activity in the gardens of the Hungarian National Museum. The session revealed how historical photography can be linked to modern life through interactive tasks in the „Actionbound“ app. After that, the project partners were attneded a tour at the Museum’s Photography Department, where various photography collections, technologies and techniques were presented. Then project coordinator Viktorija Žilinskaitė (Klaipeda County Ieva Simonaitytė Public Library) presented project activities, reviewed the achieved goals, immediate plans, the content of the guidelines for creating educational photography exhibitions and their layout. In the second part of the meeting, all partners participated in question-and-answer sessions, where they discussed project administration and budgeting, dissemination of project results, and risk management.

The second day of the meeting began with a presentation by Eva Fisli, curator of exhibitions at the Hungarian National Museum. Eva Fisli shared the experiences and good practices of organizing educational photography exhibitions at the Hungarian National Museum. After the presentation, project coordinator in Slovenia Štefan Simončić (EPEKA Slovenia) presented the good practices and initiatives for the Roma community in Slovenia. The presentation led to lively discussions about community engagement and accessibility of cultural education for all members of society. Educators from cultural organizations in Budapest also participated in the presentations. This provided more opportunities to learn about various practices and experiences of educational activities in Hungarian cultural institutions and project partner organisations.

After the presentations, project coordinator Artis Gustovskis (Art and Technology Center) initiated a brainstorming discussion on the contents of the second project output. The project partners decided to organize an international photography competition for photography enthusiasts. More information about the competition: https://photokick.eu/international-photography-competition/

The second meeting of project partners provided new ideas for planned project activities and provided opportunities to get aquainted with various experiences and challenges of organizing photo exhibitions and educational activities for different target groups and visitors.

The information was prepared by the Ieva Simonaitytė Public Library of Klaipėda County

The author of the photos – Artis Gustovskis