Ildiko Takacs
Director for the Hungarian Cultural Center in London, UK
Academic/Professional experience, and Achievements:
Ildikó Takács has led the Hungarian Cultural Center in London since December 2006. The Centre promotes Hungarian culture in the United Kingdom through high-class concerts, dance performances, exhibitions, film screenings and educational programmes. In addition to furthering Hungarian culture, Ildikó Takács has followed the preparations relating to Liverpool as the European Capital of Culture in 2008, so as to transfer best practices to the Hungarian city of Pécs, which will carry the title in 2010.
During her university years at the Faculty of Law in Budapest, she studied aesthetics and contemporary dance. After her graduation she started her career as a solicitor, specializing in intellectual property law, and went on to investigate the interaction of legal and business affairs at InterCom, the largest film distribution company in Hungary. Through that connection, she had the opportunity to work for one of the world’s largest film studies, Twentieth Century Fox, in Los Angeles and London. After receiving an LLM at Central European University, she specialized in EU matters with particular focus on regional development and cohesion policy while working for the Prime Minister’s Office
She firmly believes that her versatile work experience in both the public and private domains has created a firm basis for continuing her career as the leader of HCC. While keeping the spirit that helped the Center achieve all the successes of its past, she plans to reform the mission of the Center according to the current challenges of modern cultural diplomacy. “One of those challenges,” she said in her first press conference in December 2006, “is to create a valid vision and strategy; to be able to contextualize Hungary’s cultural and scientific values in a worldwide context, this way innovatively emphasizing Hungary’s lasting role in terms of bridging intercultural communication.”