2nd Practice Exchange on Intercultural Capacity-building

Our second Regional Practice Exchange was a meeting of minds from the cultural sector and from minority and migrants’ rights organisations - mostly from Austria, but also from Hungary and Romania. It was hosted by IG Kultur Österreich and took place at WUK Werkstätten und Kulturhaus in Vienna. In two days of lively debate, we explored:  

• The case for “political anti-racism” in cultural work (based on input from IG Kultur Österreich):
• equal access to everybody resident in Austria to grants, scholarships and prizes;
• proportionate representation in cultural advisory bodies;
• temporary preferential treatment of migrants and minorities through cultural subsidy programmes;  

• Intercultural Dialogue in the sense of the creation of positive inter-personal and intergroup ties as a form of “affirmative action” – proactive inclusion to redress discrimination (based on input by Radostin Kaloianov, Institut für Konfliktforschung)  
• Criticism of the concept of interculturalism for “drawing attention away from power relations and their discriminating structures and diverting it to cultural determinants.” (based on input by Rubia Salgado, MAIZ - Autonomes MigrantInnen Zentrum, Linz)Two workshops provided the opportunity to hear each and every person present: in one we learnt about the self-organisation of migrants in Austria from the early 1960s – initially as identity preserving cultural associations, later as alliances with non-migrant groups to campaign for political participation rights. In another, the visibility of migrants and minorities within the public sphere was hotly debated; some argued that the broader question of participation was more pertinent; others did see the significance of enhancing visibility, as long as it is voluntary and not associated with representative claims. An Open Space discussion brought out yet more of the passions and interests of the participants.

Read the report of the Vienna Practice Exchange
Listen to a broadcast of our host IG Kultur about the Vienna Practice Exchange (in German and English)