From 2022, the Department of Museology and Literature of the Ferenczy Museum Centre has started an unusual participatory urban history research project called The Crossroads. In addition to traditional local history research methods, the museum has used the involvement of former and present-day residents and architects of the town to understand the social impact of the construction and use of Route 11: how it shaped the townscape, the perception of Szentendre, how it influenced the further development of the town and what it is like to live in the town that was born in this way.
The workshop exhibition, which brings the lessons and results of the research to life, will briefly present the circumstances of the road’s construction: the alternative routes dreamed up by the city planners, the social conflicts surrounding the road’s construction, and the construction and its consequences as a result of the Kádár compromise. During the research, interviews were conducted with residents whose houses were demolished for the road construction and who were relocated to the newly built housing estate, as well as with residents of Szentendre who had to live with the main road that moved into the neighbourhood of their homes. The interviews reveal the contradictions surrounding the construction of the road and, more broadly, reveal the heavy traces of dictatorship in the dialogue about the history and development of the city.
In the following phases of the research, the Crossroads also involved the people of Szentendre who use and occupy the city in their everyday lives. The exhibition reveals the patterns in the adult population’s attitudes towards the city, the associations with urban spaces and the road, and, most spectacularly, the children’s imagination, showing the emotions and experiences associated with the youngest generations exploring the city’s spaces. The spaces of Szentendre, shaped through the eyes of children, were created by the pupils of the Rákóczi Ferenc II Primary School and Secondary School in a drawing format in collaboration with the museum educators of the Ferenczy Museum Centre.
The exhibition is an attempt to start a social dialogue about the heritage of the city, through which the history of the city can be told not by power elites or alienated institutions, but by the members of the community themselves. It is not by chance that the event is called a workshop exhibition: the small-scale, human-scale exhibition invites the visitor to share knowledge, interact and think about the city.