Museum Education Accolades

It is a great honor for the Museum of Ethnography that on September 29, 2025, at the 20^th Autumn Festival of Museums, the Pulszky Society – Hungarian Museum Association awarded a special prize to the institution's project titled Experimental Broadcast. At the same event, József Molnár, a museum educator who recently retired from the museum received the Museum Educator Lifetime Achievement Award. He has done outstanding work over several decades in involving students with disabilities and disadvantaged students in museum education, developing digital content, and designing inclusive programs.

The Experimental Broadcast is an interdisciplinary project based on student participation, carried out with the involvement of lecturers and students from ELTE, the University of Theatre and Film Arts, and the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. Its aim is to engage high school students in the topic of national identity through university students.

Students from the three universities participated in a series of workshops lasting six months, led by invited experts Ildikó Schopp (social pedagogue, art educator – Műcsarnok), Csenge Rác (media, film and communication teacher, visual culture teacher – MKE) and Natália Gleason Nagy (director MFA – SZFE). At the end of the process, the students created four different museum education activities for secondary school students, adapted to the collection exhibition.

The basic idea behind the program is to approach the question of national identity using the tools of ethnography and contemporary art, while leaving room for personal interpretation. Its educational goal is to promote experiential learning, encourage creative self-expression, and facilitate the mutual knowledge exchange between students and teachers.

Today’s young people are surrounded by a social and cultural environment in which their everyday lives are shaped by informational noise, rapidly changing trends, and challenges that are often highly complex even in relation to their age. Contemporary society exerts strong pressure on them: the process of searching for identity and self-definition is not only an inner journey but also a demanding task on a social level. These circumstances inspired the creation of an art education programme that does not rely solely on the guidance of experienced museum educators but also involves university students of pedagogy in its planning and implementation. Being closer in age to teenagers, they are more likely to find a common language with them and can address them in a more authentic way.

The collection exhibition of the Museum of Ethnography provided an ideal setting for the experiment. The project took the form of a longer-term, semester-long collaboration, enabling students to prepare thoroughly and then test their own session plans in real-life situations within the exhibition.

The impact of the initiative within the institution:

• The methodological repertoire of the Museum of Ethnography has been expanded with new sessions designed for secondary schools.

• New collaborations have been established with universities and art institutions.

• New forms of engaging with young audiences have emerged.

With this initiative, the Museum of Ethnography has not only broadened its own toolkit of museum education, but also set an example of how a museum can become a place for shared reflection, creativity, and the exchange of knowledge.