The Grand Prix for the 2025 European Heritage Awards/Europa Nostra Awards project, 'Hedgehog's Home – Inventing a Better World', was officially celebrated at the Museum of Yugoslavia in Belgrade on 8 December 2025. The ceremony featured a video message from Glenn Micallef, the EU Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture, and Sport.
By Creatives Unite NewsroomOn 8 December 2025, the Museum of Yugoslavia in Belgrade celebrated winning the Grand Prix at the 2025 European Heritage Awards/Europa Nostra Awards for its project 'Hedgehog's Home – Inventing a Better World'. The event marked Serbia’s most significant European cultural recognition of the year and gathered museum professionals, children, and educators who participated in the project. In a video message, Glenn Micallef, EU Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture, and Sport, pointed out that projects like the Hedgehog create spaces where heritage becomes a shared act of creation.
The award-winning project transforms a beloved children's poem into a participatory exhibition that sparks intergenerational dialogue and reimagines shared cultural memory across the former Yugoslavia and beyond.
“The project Hedgehog’s Home – Imagining a Better World has shown that cultural heritage can be a powerful instrument of social change, especially when created in partnership with artists, the local community, young people, and EU institutions” said the Museum’s Director, Neda Knežević.
The event—Serbia's most significant European cultural recognition of the year—brought together museum professionals, children, and educators involved in the project. Europa Nostra Secretary General Sneška Quaedvlieg-Mihailović presented the project as a subversive project of hope for the region and for all of Europe.
“In a time of insecurity, fear, and uncertainty, the exhibition Hedgehog’s Home – Imagining a Better World placed the poetry of Branko Ćopić at the heart of our reflection about home and shared values. With modest resources but great soul, imagination, and creativity, its team succeeded in moving generations” she stressed.
During the ceremony, Europa Nostra's jury statement was read, describing Hedgehog's Home as “an emotionally powerful and inclusive museum project… a subversive initiative that awakens shared regional memory while promoting European values.”
The exhibition reimagines the well-known children's poem Hedgehog's Home to explore themes of belonging, home, and collective memory in the Western Balkans. It was co-created with children aged 5–10 from Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo, alongside scenography students from the University of Belgrade. This collaborative approach resulted in over 100 creative workshops involving artists, educators, and psychologists.
The exhibition's popularity led to two extensions, attracting more than 150,000 visitors. It incorporated inclusive features such as Serbian Sign Language interpretation and a performance developed with the deaf community.
With 251 eligible applications from 41 countries competing for the 2025 Europa Nostra Awards, the project's Grand Prix win reflects exceptional achievement in a highly competitive field.
© Aleksandar Krstović / Museum of Yugoslavia, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
