YOUNG ARTISTS

Austria is known for its rich and world-famous traditional cultural heritage, but it also boasts a lively, young, creative and innovative contemporary culture. The mission of the Austrian Embassies and Cultural Fora is to support those young emerging Austrian contemporary artists and present their achievements in the fields of arts and science to the world.

The Department of International Cultural Policy of Austria's Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs (BMEIA) has developed a number of grants and programs supporting young Austrian artists, for example in the field of music, literature and film. The Austrian cultural network abroad uses these programs as an inspiration and guidance for their programing, unified in their goal to help the young artists to establish international contacts and make themselves known as well as to provide a platform for dialogue and intercultural exchange with other artists around the world.

HERE A selection of these programs:

The New Austrian Sound of Music

The New Austrian Sound of Music – in short NASOM  – is a long-term sponsorship program by the BMEIA, promoting young Austrian musicians for the sixth time in the two-year period 2018/2019. The aim of NASOM is to offer support for international performances of promising young talents with the help of a global network of Embassies, Cultural Fora and General Consulates. A further objective of NASOM is to draw more attention to the fact that Austrian music creation – beyond the traditional – is as vibrant, modern and culturally diverse as ever. The young artists accepted for this program were selected in cooperation with the Music Information Center Austria (mica), the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw), the Mozarteum University Salzburg, the Music and Arts University of the City of Vienna (MUK), the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG), the Anton Bruckner Private University in Upper Austria, as well as local music event organizers and music journalists. Here once again, young emerging musicians from the genres classical, jazz, world, contemporary and pop music were chosen to participate in this sponsorship program.

schreibART AUSTRIA

The Department of International Cultural Policy of the BMEIA has furthermore developed a special literature program, called schreibART AUSTRIA, recommending a new generation of Austrian writers to a broad international audience. The international network of the Austrian cultural offices with its almost 94 Cultural Fora, Embassies and General Consulates, who all do cultural work, is supposed to act as bridge-builder for the writes to enter into an international cultural dialogue around the world. With the help of four well-known literature experts of Austria, a total of twenty Austrian authors, ranging from the prose, lyric and drama field, have been selected to be included in this publication, broadly representing the Austrian literature world in its entire diversity.

 

Austrian Short Film Series/Österreichischen Kurzfilmschau

The cooperation established in 2012 between the BMEIA and the Academy of the Austrian Film/Akademie des Österreichischen Films has been very successful for years. The selected short-films, many of them from young directors recently graduated from film schools, are being shown worldwide through the network of the Austrian international cultural institutions. The program will be continued in 2018. Here the brochures to the "Austrian Short Film Series" of 2016 and 2017: 

Young Austrian Artists on Social Media

The ACF Washington furthermore has developed a special social media project called Hello, I am ... (with the hashtag #ATinDC_YoungArtist) that will start in March 2018 and will last throughout the year. The idea is to offer outstanding Austrian art students the possibility to use the social media channels of the ACF Washington as a presentation platform for their work over a certain period of time and thus be able to directly reach and interact with an international audience. In cooperation with the three most important Austrian art universities – Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Kunstuniversität Linz – two students of each university will be chosen to present their work for respectively six weeks on the ACF’s Facebook site (@acfdc) and website (www.acfdc.org). The presentation of each student will be also announced in our monthly newsletter. At the end of the year the student with the most „likes, shares & comments“ received will be awarded in an internal ranking and be invited to Washington DC to stay for a week and present his or her work in the premises of the Austrian Cultural Forum.