Budapest’s Memory in Motion: KÖME & INTERNÉP’s Commons of Heritage and Regeneration

KÖME—short for the Association of Cultural Heritage Managers (Hungarian: Kulturális Örökség Menedzserek Egyesülete)—is an organisation based in Budapest that works at the intersection of heritage, innovation, and ecological transition. Its core idea is that cultural heritage (tangible and intangible) is not only about preserving the past, but about activating memory, identity, and public spaces as vectors for sustainable social and environmental change.

Within EMCCINNO, KÖME is developing an experimental site called INTERNÉP in Budapest, in collaboration with the artist co-op Pneuma Szöv. INTERNÉP seeks to map and shape the ecosystem around a specific neighbourhood (notably the street “People’s Theatre / Népszínház” street) by creating platforms for diverse actors—locals, institutions, artists, cultural practitioners—to work together in the shared neighbourhood, to co-create public space, heritage narratives, and sustainable practices.

“Opening up – welcoming things that you are not expecting“

EMCCINNO (“Empowering Cultural and Creative Industries for a Sustainable Climate Transition”) is a Horizon Europe project involving multiple cultural/creative organisations across Europe. KÖME is one of five “transformation sites” in EMCCINNO. Their role is to prototype sustainable models in cultural heritage—testing what it means for a heritage organisation to be ecologically, socially, and culturally sustainable. INTERNÉP is their site-specific intervention in Budapest, which will feed both local action and transnational learning.

Some of the actors involved include local residents, municipal heritage institutions, cultural practitioners, environmentally-oriented civil society, researchers, and planners.