The Jutasi Circle

What is Jutasi Circle? The basic idea is the need for exciting, liveable areas that people are happy to take possession of. 

Jutasi is a neighbourhood where people feel they own the streets and parks. Where families get together on Saturday afternoons. Where grandmothers can go for an after-school walk with their grandchildren on a Wednesday afternoon. Where young people can group, feel free, safe and untethered – with skateboards under their feet or just sitting on benches and saving the world. 

It all started with community planning: countless questionnaires, lots of interviews with the people who live here and discussions led by architects, urban planners and community developers... Working with the locals, we formed a vision for the neighbourhood’s future on the drawing board. This is how the layout of the 3.5 km Jutasi jogging track was planned and the new functional parks of new old-new community areas at Táborállás Park, Kálvin János Park and the park in front of Deák Ferenc Primary School were created.

Construction work, of course, is not limited to installing benches, resurfacing sidewalks and renovating playgrounds. Building in harmony with the locals to create a real neighbourhood community is a far greater and more important task. 

We started out, with three different set of ideas and approach, but ultimately, everything came together – in the mind of the participants, in the processes and the joint programmes. We believe that, in the end, it will all make living here a bit different, a bit better after 2023. 

Jutasi Public Space - You Can Come Down Wearing Slippers

It is a special community space with the purpose of involving the micro-communities of the housing estate in various activities: a music kindergarten, a LEGO club for the young and the even younger, open-air educational lectures, family workshops... programmes for all ages, programmes that allow people to meet. 

Since 2021, we have been stacking up the components of the Jutasi Public Space and in 2023 we will do even more. As we take possession of the jogging track and renew the parks, we will fill them with programmes: outdoor yoga, Nordic walking tours, a kindergarten and school fence drawing competition, asphalt drawing competitions, calls for photo and sound collecting and community games based on all of the above.

Circollecive and Circulade - Community Circus

The transformative power of a circus derives from a combination of education, artistic motion and community experience. Community circus is far more than simply educating and performing circus acts and tricks: it teaches discipline, builds self-confidence and community, sparks creativity and, in the process, becomes a tool of artistic expression. Since 2021, walking around the Jutasi housing estate, we regularly see young people juggling and spinning sticks, bats, balls and plates with ever greater skill and courageously trying out acrobatic exercises.

As part of the programme, we: 

• organise community activities and programmes for all; 

• create a common language and a common theme through the circus; 

• organise events that involve the people of the city and the region as creators, not spectators; 

• provide, through free professional training, the basics of circus pedagogy to local professionals who can then integrate these creative methods into their daily work. Our effort has already led to forming several small local circus clubs.

The Cirquart Interactive Circus Experience – Follow the signs and rediscover the public parks of Jutasi

To have a circus show even on a regular Tuesday night – a virtual track has been created, which, in reality, is no more than a special digital arrangement around the entire housing estate. Those who wish to perform receive detailed information by scanning the QR codes placed at various locations, with video explanations and professional pointers on how to do certain tricks and stunts. They can then view their performance in its natural surroundings on their phones. 

(And if, at first, you don't succeed? Not even the second time? Don’t worry; you'll surely get it right on the third try) 

You can see the digital circus performances all year round at designated points at the Jutasi Road Housing Estate.

Another element of the community circus is the Kabóca (Cicada) Puppet Theatre’s Circulade, which actively involves Jutasi families, schools and kindergartens in the life of the theatre. Of course, puppetry is a complex, all-around art that appeals to children and adults alike. At the Circulade events, actors and puppeteers become acrobats and jugglers, manipulating giant puppets. All this comes together in one single swirling street theatre, a fairground spectacle in the best sense of the word. The circus themed performances in the Circulade tent, the aquatic creatures of Lake Balaton brought to life by the giant puppets will be on show at Jutasi Mini Picnics, at the Jutasi Picnic and Olympics and the Kabóciádé (‘Cicadiade’) Family Festival.

Jutasi Picnic and Olympics

September 2023 will mark the third year in a row that the parks of the housing estate will be filled with life and things will happen that have probably never happened before. 

A weekend when staircase communities will form teams to match wits, where stilt walkers, acrobats, professional and amateur jugglers will walk the streets, street theatre productions pop up around the corner and perhaps even a tightrope walker will balance on a rope strung between buildings. Foosball and ping pong tables will line up in the shade of the trees, chess figures in tournament will be thoughtfully moved on the benches, climbing walls will be erected for the brave and teqball players will rotate at the tables. And, of course, there will be the PICNIC - when we’ll sit together at the tables to enjoy each other's company over delicious snacks. 

This weekend is not going to be about big-name performers; it'll be about the joy of being together, of playing together. Organised by the locals, for the locals.