A proactive and innovative international cultural policy is a quality benchmark of Austria’s foreign policy. Its tasks and objectives are precisely formulated in the NEW International Cultural Policy Concept, which has been in force since 2001. In a nutshell, we aim at creating international moments of attention for the creative side of Austria using culture as a medium. Starting out from the premise that cultural dialogue is increasingly evolving as a decisive factor in good relations between nations and the opportunities opened up by the globalisation process, the central tasks of Austrian international cultural policy are very clear:

• Culture is to be used as an instrument to communicate Austria’s position in Europe in an understandable and perceptible manner. Narratives and stories have always been elements that contributed to the evolution of a European identity. For this reason, European integration is fundamentally a cultural task.

• Culture is an aspect that provides Austria with opportunities to distinguish itself at the international level. In the increasing competition for "moments of attention", Austria has very good chances of attracting notice on the strength of its outstanding cultural achievements and of being judged by virtue of these.

•  The activities pursued in the fields of arts and science must be supplemented by educational projects, because the future European knowledge area depends on the successful realisation of European educational concepts.

•  Acting as a mouthpiece for a Europe of diversity, efforts in this field must concurrently aim at preventing an excessive focus on policies promoting national identity. An open-minded approach to cultural work implies creating interest groups above and beyond the issues of national identity. Much rather, we are called upon to act in accordance with the words of Stefan Zweig, who once said he loved Austria because it permitted him to be a patriot and a citizen of the world at the same time.

Hence, the priorities of Austrian international cultural policy are the following:

•  We want to make a contribution towards creating a more cultural Europe. Europe’s strength lies to a great extent in its cultural diversity. A community that focuses its efforts exclusively on politics and the economy will neither succeed in generating enthusiasm for Europe, nor in creating a European public nor a truly democratic Europe.

•  What we want to do – in our common interest – is to gain our neighbours as allies in the realisation of the opportunities offered by the cultural area of Central Europe.

•  We want to contribute to the full integration of South Eastern Europe into the European cultural dialogue, promoting the stabilisation of these countries by strengthening the civil society.

• We want to make concrete efforts to foster the dialogue between cultures and civilisations, not least because our own history is tainted with conflicts of language and culture and the presence of totalitarian ideologies.

In order to be conducive to this goal, international cultural activities must be based on flexible structures and modern methods. Currently, Austrian international cultural policy making has a worldwide network at its disposal, consisting of 28 Cultural Fora, 50 Austria Libraries and 5 Language Institutes, special cooperation offices in Washington and Lvov as well as Austria’s embassies and consulates general, which are all involved in cultural work. With these tasks and objectives, Austrian international cultural work has long grown beyond representing the past, and has become an investment in the future; or rather, as any cultural project, a form of intervention likely to generate innovation.

Ambassador Emil Brix
Head of the Cultural Policy Section