This year the Ministry of Culture and Innovation will again support the Sándor Csoóri Programme with 2.5 billion HUF (around $7.1 million), which will be available to 1,776 winning applicants this year, Minister for Culture and Innovation Balázs Hankó of Hungary announced on Friday, 20 September in Budapest, at the House of Traditions.

The Sándor Csoóri Programme was started in 2016, and it aims to help Hungarian folk singers, folk dancers, and other folk artists and folk artist groups to create and cultivate Hungarian tradition through grants. It is named after 20th-century Hungarian poet and essayist Sándor Csoóri.

Minister Hankó stressed that the almost 2,000 grants awarded will be used to reach more than 600 foreign regions to further strengthen Hungarian identity. In the main categories of winners, more than 700 folk dance ensembles, more than 300 folk dance clubs, as well as 250 other folk music programmes received support.

A total of 2101 applications were received for this year’s call for proposals. Folk dance was again the most popular category this year, but there was also considerable interest from folk craft artists.

The aim of the programme is to promote the transfer of knowledge, and develop the professional work of Hungarian folk dance and folk music ensembles, and the communities of folk art creators, both in the Hungarian motherland and in ethnic Hungarian communities across the border, and to strengthen these communities, thus preserving Hungarian values and traditions.

Miklós Both, Director General of the House of Traditions emphasized that the communities created or growing through the Sándor Csoóri Programme support each other not only in preserving traditions, but also in everyday life, thus creating real, living communities. The role of the House of Traditions in this system is to try to bring together the countries, NGOs, and associations at the regional and county levels to participate in the programme and to support them by sharing knowledge.

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