Three days when the city becomes a creative space – this was the II. BUM Workshop Festival.

What did the autumn festival provide differently than the spring's first occasion?

In spring, the question was whether the idea would work. In autumn, we observed how the system behaves under greater load. Nearly fifty workshops ran concurrently in thirty locations, and the important lesson was that the festival functions well when it does not impose a uniform experience on all participants. Instead, it offers an urban rhythm that everyone can connect to at their own pace.

As an organizer, what types of venues did you find important to visit personally?

We intentionally chose very different spaces. For example, on Bartók Béla Road, we visited a gastronomic workshop at the kitchen of "A Bite of Happiness," where colorful Italian pasta was made - here, the emphasis was on the communal experience and the joy of cooking together.

In contrast, the Kredenc Studio required a completely different kind of attention for the Japanese sashiko stitching and jewelry making: a slower, more concentrated presence. At the Lucky Shepherd Designer Store, during the Lampala Ringdesign ring-making workshop, it was interesting to see how an object becomes a reflection of personal decisions.

At the Studio Circle, we participated in a qigong movement session, where the result was not a product, but an internal experience. In the attic workshop on Ráday Street, ceramic flowers were made, while in the Something Productive Studio, the Japanese watoji bookbinding technique was demonstrated. These locations illustrated how many different ways one can connect to the same festival.

What was the most important common lesson from these diverse workshop experiences?

That quality does not depend on spectacle. The workshops worked best where instructors left space for participants and did not aim to "produce" a finished result. Participants also felt that they had not come to consume but to engage in something and learn something.

What did the festival reveal about the functioning of urban spaces?

That streets come alive when we do not just pass through them. During the Workshop Festival, urban spaces temporarily received a slower, more attentive function, which was a very strong experience for both participants and businesses.

How does all this fit into BUM's long-term thinking?

For BUM, the Workshop Festival is not primarily an event but a tool. A format in which community building, support for small businesses, and urban livability can manifest simultaneously. The most important lesson from the autumn festival was that this format is scalable - but only if it retains its human-scale operation.

The II. BUM Workshop Festival reaffirmed the thinking along which we have been progressing since the beginning: urban formats based on creation and connection work best when they allow space for growth and depth. The experiences from the festival will be integrated into BUM's further work, and the Workshop Festival will return in this spirit, expectedly in the autumn.