Participation in society, mobility, social change and CCSR

Gerhard Kowař

“Theme evening” is the old-fashioned designation we gave to four discussion forums held on the occasion of KulturKontakt Austria’s 20th anniversary. We deliberately chose this old-fashioned term because we wanted to remove ourselves somewhat from the general practice of immediately subordinating everything that is done to some presumed purpose or other.

We associated “theme evening” with reflecting, listening and slowing down, as a kind of countermovement to the ubiquitous “hyperaccelerated standstill”, whose negative consequences have been pointed out by the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa.
It was important to us to take the time and provide the space to discuss key issues of education, the arts and culture that will be playing an increasing role in our future work. Participation in society, mobility, social change and CCSR were the themes we wanted to explore. We succeeded in acquiring eminent guests from Austria and abroad for our panels, with whom we discussed and developed central issues and initiatives in a workshop atmosphere. I should like to express my thanks to our panel members, our attentive moderators and the interested members of our audiences for making it possible to reflect on these issues from a variety of valuable perspectives.
This issue of KKA Magazine is devoted almost exclusively to the theme evenings, an event series which we intend to continue in the coming year. In this issue you will find introductory presentations, a summary of the discussions, and a series of photos that give a visual impression of the evenings. If you would like to hear more of what was said, please take advantage of the opportunity to download the complete audio files from our website.
In our next issue we plan to focus on the subject of diversity and also to provide more detailed information about KKA activities and programmes that attempt to meet the challenges of diversity in society.
Let me take this opportunity to wish you all the joys of the holiday season and a very Happy New Year. I am already looking forward to greeting you as readers of our magazine in the spring of 2010.