Through a call, 366 large, small, extraordinary, exciting, participative projects BY the companies of the Platform 2020 FOR St. Pölten and the Culture Region St. Pölten will be selected and jointly developed.

This development project aims to remeasure and reduce distances in an environment where proximity in space has not led to a great deal of contact and exchange. The neighbourhood in question is the area surrounding the University of Applied Sciences to a radius of roughly 800 metres. A two-stage collaborative process in 2023 and 2024 will explore this social space before seeding it step by step with neighbourhood activities. The process is designed to serve as a template that can subsequently be applied to any European location.

The project is focused on the revitalisation and the new positioning of the Old Steel Lift Bridge at Melk as a bridge leading to culture, as the link connnecting the city to the Danube, that archetypically European river, and as a gateway to the UNESCO world heritage site Melk. The City of Melk has already finalised a relevant concept in collaboration with NÖ Regional in 2018 , which could serve as a basis for the project.

Two confessionals in St. Pölten’s public space serve as a kind of interface for anonymous contact between two real people. Contact is initiated in the form of a letter that makes its way to a “confessor”. The confessor receives the anonymously deposited confession and treats the contents however she or he sees fit: they may answer, dispense absolution or suggest a way of doing penance. The result is two people who will never meet in person sharing a secret, located as they may be in different European countries.

A two-to-three-day participative project will set the scene for a clubbing event designed for young people afflicted with hearing loss. An inclusive Tango Argentino project for the deaf of all ages will give deaf and hearing people the opportunity to team up as dance partners. As there is no comparable event in other German speaking countries, it is likely that, given adequate PR work, deaf people even from beyond Austria’s border might be tempted to take part in the festival.

The 2024 programme of the Landestheater Niederösterreich will feature a great and specifically European story, realised as a co-production with theatres and theatre groups from other European Capital of Culture Cities in Estonia and Norway (but maybe also in Bosnia) Dramatists from the three countries will jointly write scripts for the stage that work both as stand-alone plays and as three parts of a Netflix-like series. The three plays will be performed as a theatre marathon in the three cities. The premiere will take place in St. Pölten in 2024 with an at least trilingual cast.

Taking its cue from the Children.Art.Lab., the aim here is to create an architectural monument that meets the given spatial criteria, stimulates the imagination and can serve as an architetectural-artistic landmark. All these requirements are met by the EuropaCUBE, radiating playfulness as it does while at the same time serving as a landmark signalling creative activity.

This project, jointly organised with donaufestival, begins and ends in St. Pölten. Between these two end points, the craft mentioned in the title is away on a voyage on the Danube, from which it will return with a cargo that is surprisingly different from the one it departed with, when that cargo was ceremoniously bade farewell in St. Pölten. The shipload of artistic “contraband” is destined for four European cities – Bratislava, Budapest, Novi Sad and Belgrade –, where it is unloaded with all due pomp and circumstance. The boat returns loaded with artistic cargo, which will be presented at the Domplatz at the climax of the closing event. The Danish performance group SIGNA, which specialises in the creation of haunting parallel worlds, will be onboard. Its approach makes the audience part of the performance by involving them in one-to-one talks in a styled setting. What we get here is a sort of ghost ship with a cargo of contraband. Having dropped anchor in the four European cities, in mutates for a few days into a speculative space for SIGNA’s fictive reality.

The young generation, especially teenagers from age 14 up and young adults should have a place where they can simply be themselves and get in touch with others. Two locations seem to be fit for this purpose: cafés, where people are invited in to recharge their batteries in heart-to-heart conversations, and churches, where they are offered space to get in touch with God, themselves and other people. These locations are ideal for launching projects that extend a helping hand to people who are normally difficult to contact, such as refugees or the homeless.

Salon meetings, writing texts as a collaborative venture, school projects, contacting local media, putting on shows: these are the methods used by the project “Gutes tun – nicht nur daran denken” to give the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations a high profile so that their vision of a good life for all can be realised.

The students of the Integratives Montessori Atelier will immerse themselves in the development process of a biographical drama project dedicated to the theme of freedom. Drawing on such fields of culture as dance, song, yoga, visual art, philosophy and spirituality, this production will be developed in collaboration with the association Nesterval. Rehearsals will be spread over the entire school year 2019/2020.

Working within the highly complex base conditions of St. Pölten’s special needs schools (125 pupils with a very wide range of intellectual abilities and additional physical* and mental impairments), the topic of "aesthetics" is to be implemented as a universal principle of action in the school environment in a project spanning several years. The pupils’ differing degrees of perceptual capacity and their individual susceptibility to artistic approaches, taking into account their particular impairment will be studied and evaluated with a view to offering appropriate and holistic support.

The train has been an archetypal symbol of transport since the days of J M W Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway. The Artists in Residence (AIR) Train commutes between St. Pölten and Krems. Offering a limited time window and a decelerated experience of space, it provides ample opportunity for reflection and contemplation -a welcome alternative to everyday routine and the hubbub created by the wealth of cultural offerings. The ECoC year and the fact that trains are an eco-friendly means of transport will combine to increase the use and significance of the St. Pölten–Krems rail link. Artists will be invited to create a succession of works for the AIR train. Some actions, performances, readings and interventions will be intermittent, others are fixtures throughout 2024.

In 2024, St. Pölten will be reborn as Europe’s go-to place for all things accordion; musicians from all over the continent will be striking up here in our streets. Nor will there be a shortage of instruments. The late actor, musician and died-in-the-wool St. Pöltner Hannes Thanheiser (1925–2014) was a passionate collector all his life, amassing no less than 250 rare, valuable or unusual accordions, which we plan to put on display for the whole year in a special showroom.

In the summer of 2024 the Galerie Daliko will be transformed into an anchorage for international art activities, with particular focus, as is only to be expected from this gallery, being put on the countries of Eastern Europe. What happens to your own artistic identity if you cast off moorings and drop anchor somewhere else altogether? This is the question that will exercise the participants in a workshop where they will spend several days making an outsize anchor. The anchor is a powerful symbol of belief in a united Europe and in the importance of art.

An urban artists' house is being considered for professionally working and creative citizens, but also for people who are interested in and inspired by creative work. Situated close to the centre, this house contains several design and communication rooms. Persons who want to work semi-professionally or professionally can rent a room on a fixed basis. For hobby artists, the infrastructure is available at cost price (materials, expenses). Regular workshops and exhibitions offer both artists and citizens the opportunity to get in touch with each other.

ART-Mobil is designed to serve as an interdisciplinary, participative art and art education vehicle throughout Capital of Culture year (and beyond). With help from residents, a (second-hand) caravan will be transformed into a mobile studio, exhibition and information space, which will tour the region as a “local supplier of culture“ starting in 2024.

What would Egon Schiele, who, as we know,was imprisoned on trumped-up charges for three weeks in Neulengbach in 1912, do if he were to return today and immerse himself in the digitised world of the twenty-first century?The painter is reimagined as a cyborg in this station drama set in and around  Neulengbach Castle. He cannot but run foul of political and artistic norms, and find himself in prison all over again.

The project “Atelier Traisental 2024” wants to highlight the location in the heart of Europe of the up-and-coming region St. Pölten, equally remarkable as it is for its cultural diversity and its high quality of life. Artists from current EU member states, from potential candidate countries, from Austria and from St. Pölten itself and its environs will be invited to make a statement on a given annual theme. The theme for the year 2021 has already been announced. It is “Breathing Europe”.

Largely relying on European funding, the association Jugend und Lebenswelt organises trips for youth groups from all over Europe to St. Pölten, where they team up with local youngsters to pool their creative potential in two areas of the Capital of Culture programme. In the “Aufgang Zirkus” project, the youth groups collaborate on a circus programme; the “Aufgang Essen Aufgang Trinken” is a culinary get-to-know-each-other pop-up trip. What the two projects have in common is the cultivation of cooperation, perception and openness, participation, inclusion, intrapersonal development and interest in other peopel and different experiences.

B.O.R.N is a “holistic space philosophical concept” devised by Peter Bachler, “depicting the seven chief energies characteristic of humankind, in the four design variants pictures–places–wheels–nature”. It comprises “seven project works in seven significant locations; seven sculptures in seven different places; a montage of seven light discs and a rendition of the seven types of energy by seven artists”.

This dance performance by choreographer Brigitte Wilfing addresses the plurality of gestures indicative of attitudes towards Europe. In the setting of a polling booth residents are given the opportunity to mime how Europe appears to them and what in their view it should actually be. The results will be recapitulated in the form of holograms projected onto suitable surfaces in the city.

Even if political upheavals led to new distances between Europe and Great Britain, the cultural capital St. Pölten invites you to "Bed & Brexit". English women* have the opportunity to participate via a website. During selected events, they are invited by St. Pölten families to board and lodge.

This artistic-scientific project centers on the personality of Bertha von Suttner. It is all about the history of peace treaties. Conceived as a collaborative venture involving schools and other civil society organisations, it tells the story of how today’s map of the world came into being by establishing contact with places that have at one time hosted a peace negotiation: Cambrai, Eisenburg, Camp David, Oslo, Jaffa, Dayton, Münster/Osnabrück, etc. The project can be expanded to include art works in public space and a permanent web museum.

This artistic project will build – quite literally – a bridge between two river banks, creating positive synergies for the Sonnenpark, its neighbours, visitors and St. Pölten as it does so. 27 or 28 star-shaped frames of the structure supporting the bridge will symbolise the EU’s member countries. Performances staged on the bridge by cooperation partners from the EU will stress the things we have in common. The dynamic arrangement of the bridge’s structural elements will provide a great variety of different perspectives for the audience.

The Department of Urban Planning and Mobility Czar DI Schmidbauer have proposed St. Pölten as the venue and logistics centre for the Austrian Bicycle Summit to be held in 2024 under the aegis of the Federal Ministry of Sustainability and Tourism (BMNT). The Austrian Bike Summit will host decision makers and members of the interested public with a view to developing new perspectives on transport policy and encouraging more extensive bicycle use.

The promotion of cross-border cultural exchange: this is the basis of the decades-old youth exchange between Melk and its twin city Herrieden in Bavaria. Every year, children and teenagers from each of the cities visit the other for a week. This programme could be enhanced by adding artistic-creative modules. The connection between the City of Melk, Melk Abbey and the City of Saniob in Romania, which covers many charitable projects, could be made to serve a similar purpose.

This project is looking to use an increase in the awareness of our history to provide more security. This will be done by establishing encounter zones across the demarcation lines separating institutions (VS Otto Glöckel, HBLA, FH, Landestheater) and age groups (primary school pupils, teenagers, 50plus). This puts the joint use of resources – ergotherapists, social pedagogues, teachers, radio makers, drama/art educators, etc. – within reach.

Strict etiquette had better be left at home: The Chamber Music Festival 20:24 presents chamber music and lieder in public locations so that barriers to entry that have deterred many people – perhaps particularly the young – are practically non-existent. Several artists from different European countries will take part in this dusting-off operation, which will include cooperation with social institutions such as the Emmausgemeinschaft.

There are not that many public playgrounds in St. Pölten, but there are an awful lot  of swings, climbing frames and swimming pools in private ownership. “Kinder kapern Stadt“ will identify spaces – public and private - where children can let off steam and where people will actually be delighted to play host to unannounced visitors.  Like the straw bushes that denote an open Heuriger, Jolly Roger flags will fly over all the places where children are in the captain’s chair for the day.

Chronostasis is a project that specifically addresses the theme of digitisation and Artificial Intelligence. Located in a box that mirrors our discreet digital spaces, which in its turn is located inside an exhibition room, a high-powered neuronal network uses speech to communicate with the observer and demonstrates just how much modern technology is capable of: facial recognition, searching for a person in the internet, emotional analysis, etc. The installation is part of a doctoral thesis on the topic of ‘Ideal Self’ – how we optimise and stage ourselves.

St. Pölten’s arthouse institution Cinema Paradiso takes to the road in 2024. A tractor with a suitably adapted trailer transports European film culture from the capital to the country. Screenings will materialise out of nowhere, guerilla-action style on some occasions, on others they will be integrated into village festivals and on yet others will be part of an event featuring young film makers. We will see movies at the cathedral and special programs in the regular venue.

This project aims at synchronising different places and their residents by using a virtual public space. To this end, free-standing door frames housing video screens – the “City Ports” – are to be installed in 2024 on pavements in two different cities, say, in St. Pölten and Clichy or Brno; the video screens will show audivovisual livestreams from the partner city. This “urban Skype™” allows residents to present themselves, their cultures and their oddities and to bring what looks like foreign and far away into close neighbourly contact.

Every child from zero to ten year old will be welcome at the round-the-year Club 3 Kids at the Cinema Paradiso, where an artistic activity to suit each and every one of them will always be available. Forget everything that has ever made you feel uncomfortable about entering a strange place. There are no barriers. It’s just children and artists getting along like a house on fire.

Young artists often find it difficult to find a suitable venue for the presentation of their work. Club Muluc does just that by providing access to locations, events, internet platforms and social media. The project has a European dimension in that it involves an exchange with artists and collectives from all over the continent.

The gastronomic development of the Stadtpark (City Park) is planned by a restaurant operation with additional sales stands. Regional farmers and winegrowers can offer their products. It should also be possible to consume food that you have brought with you. In addition, an orderly barbecue zone can be set up.

The Festspielhaus St. Pölten is serving up several projects. The Statt-Orchestra gives free rein to productive dilettantism. It unites people who have always wanted to make music but cannot play an instrument and musicians playing an instrument they have never played before. The underlying point is active social inclusion and a joint reflection on Europe’s (musical) values, spiced of course by the sheer fun of it and the pure joie de jouer. A project entitled At home//In the garden//On the beach sees the Festspielhaus putting the little frequented environs of the Cultural district to social use: book stations pitch their tent in the green areas, the feeling of being on a beach is conjured up by a stage in or near the river and cultural events, such as a musical lunch, are laid on in the Festspielhaus cafeteria and the dining hall of the government district of the province of Lower Austria. For the Community Dance Days 2024 the Festspielhaus joins forces with European partners for dance projects to create new choreographies relevant to European issues, which will be performed in the partners’ countries of origin and in 2024 in St. Pölten. Dancing has a way of establishing emotional closeness, in keeping with our motto of “rescaling distances“. The project, as you would expect from its title, is ready to welcome all those who are interested in dance.

This project will start off in St. Pölten under the title: A Short Concert after Sunday Mass [Kurzkonzert nach der Sonntagsmesse]. Musicians from the region are invited to take part and to treat churchgoers to quarter-of-an-hour concerts after mass in the square outside the church.

The Melk Centre for Contemporary History, which is in charge of the Concentration Camp Memorial in Melk, will, starting in 2020, be organising international youth conferences focused on contemporary and democracy political issues. Works created - offensively as a mirror of current socio-political challenges - by the young people in the context of the conferences will tour their native countries before they are presented in an exhibition at the memorial sites at Melk and Erlauf. The exhibition will be part of a great youth exchange event in 2024.

While an appetizing snack or meal makes their mouths water, only a few children are aware of what needs to happen between the field and the plate for a tasty, wholesome meal to be served up at table. Specially trained farmers’ wives, who know what's what when it comes to produce and are skilled at preparing their selection to perfection, will pass on their skills to children and teenagers. Whether this takes the form of a cookery course or workshop for children or of sessions that put children’s tastebuds and other senses to the test – these ladies will share their valuable knowledge about the origins of foodstuffs and about the meaning of such terms as “regional”, “seasonal”, “organic” and “CO2 neutral”. In some formats, full account is taken of the great variety of European cuisine.

Focusing on music and the arts, the primary school Daniel Gran I will offer a multitude of artistic and musical activities related to St. Pölten’s potential role as a Capital of Culture. These activities have already resulted in the distance that separates some children from art and culture being reduced and in a rise in the self-esteem of children with a migration background. All the children, classroom teachers, music teachers, spare time coordinators, headmistress and all our other partners are integrated into the project.

Experimental theatre maker and performance artist Stefan Kaegi has made a name for himself by, among other things, being part of the renowned Rimini Protokoll. In 2024 he will stage mass bicycle tours, where participants will experience St. Pölten and its environs in an altogether new light. Providing a musical setting for the city and the Culture Region, a sound track and loudspeakers play out alongside the individual cyclists, who will each contribute their own voice and their own social role. The overarching theme is the demarcation lines separating city and country and their consequences for people and the environment currently being renegotiated almost everywhere in Europe. The resulting travel experience will feel like a collectively produced documentary with deep political relevance.

A safari of a different kind. A city knows many worlds, rarely are there people who are familiar with all of them. This project, conceived in an experiential educational way, invites participants from different milieus to get to know each other. Each social environment has its own rules and laws, elaborate codes and rules of the game. At the same time, structured interaction changes one's own behaviour and that of the world in which one lives. The city safari thus enables participants and the environment to gain knowledge and modify their behaviour at the same time. Classically according to the criteria of "city bound" training and test phase, as well as a reflection ("what have I experienced") including transfer ("what of it can I take with me into my own life and integrate). In addition, the project prepares the participating districts for this exp

We are going to animate St. Pölten! The project Culture in Motion aims to make short stop-motion films featuring the Capital of Culture’s residents and visitors in 2024. Stop-motion is an animation technique that combines various elements – photography, music, visual art, drama, performance – to create film. Digitisation has made the technique cheap and easy to handle. It is an ideal medium for a new artistic perspective on the Capital of Culture. The clips can be used in a wide variety of contexts to open up a new perspective on the city.

A real and digital "juke-box" will be conceived, whose programme includes all planned projects and events. Citizens from the catchment area of St. Pölten are invited to use the juke box and play their favourite programme. Instead of songs this juke box "plays" short clips of the respective organizers. On the one hand this is regarded as information, on the other hand as feedback (which interests outweigh).

Cubes measuring roughly 3x3x3m and accessible on two sides will be put up in St. Pölten. They will house representations of all forms of art – literature, music, film, painting, sculpture, architecture – together with examples of all the languages spoken in all the countries of the EU. The idea of picking up art and culture in passing is likely to appeal to many people. The artistic content of the cubes will be left to artists from all the different states of the EU.

We want to give Europe wide visible form to our environmentally friendly bicycle mobility – a culture that really cares about future generations . Capital of Culture year will see a steep rise in active, barrier-free transport; KulTour ambassadors on two wheels will link St. Pölten to Europe, exchanging views with St. Pölten’s guests on the way about subjects such as encounters and experiences, cultural assets that merit protection and the environment and mobility in different regions of Europe. The first steps towards the foundation of a consortium and towards project coordination will be taken in 2020 and the full programme will unfold from January to December right through Capital of Culture year.

In the dance project UNDER COVER, choreographer Ulduz Ahmadzadeh and dramaturge Johanna Figl focus their attention on those young girls and women who have come to Austria from Muslim dominated countries. “Imprisoned Mothers” addresses the plight of women who are worn out by the conflict between their role as mothers and their desire for more freedom. For HIDDEN DANCES, Ahmadzadeh and Figl carried out research on historic dance forms in Iran that are already all but lost.

This project is looking to survey the region of St. Pölten using what is known as Deep Mapping. This approach sets out to capture the “spirit of the place” by gathering, linking and evaluating a great variety of different data, such as weather, mobility, social structure, ethnographic information, etc. Alongside the region’s dominant narratives “forgotten” stories are isolated and discussed and analysed with the local population. The focus is predominantly on questions of mobility and transformation but the role of what has been swept under the carpet or accepted on hearsay is also of interest.

The seven-spot ladybird family seems small and unassuming at first sight, but in fact it connects people across borders. The ladybirds leave their native country Austria to travel the world. In hotels, travel agencies and a host of other locations they leave their messsage of peace. In this way, positive vibes are spread all over the world.

The history of the working-class city St. Pölten is closely associated with major employers such as Glanzstoff, Voith or Harland’s Coats. What meaning have such terms as “Proletkult” working class culture or even working class itself? What is the future of manual labour and, indeed, of work in any form? From 2020, this annual festival combines reflections and workshops on the status of manual labour and a cultural programme focused on topical variations on the industrial folk song.

We all know that huge data streams course continuously through our ultra connected world. What we are much less aware of is the physicality of those streams, a deficit the Fineart Galerie Traismauer seeks to address by making communication visible in an attractive and productive way. Light signals in Morse code connect the Traisen river valley with Krems. Messages formulated by residents are transmitted between Krems-Stein, Hollenburg, Traismauer, Herzogenburg, Unterradelberg and St. Pölten and even as far as Moravský Krumlov. Artists develop and devise objects, sounds and haptic experiences at the“transmitter stations” and in select locations in the region between Krems and the Traisen valley. The project will be onstream throughout 2024 and will raise awareness about the importance of collaboration.

Electric and solar-powered minibuses, cars and bicycle rickshaws drive visitors and residents to and from culinary hotspots according to the "Hop-On - Hop-Off" principle. The locations are spread over the entire city area and beyond.

• On World Environment Day, 5 June 2024, there are 0 emissions.
• The ECoC year 2024 is staged as a big Green Event.
• Partner regions and countries and joint activities from EU projects will be presented together with companies and citizens from St. Pölten and the Culture Region.
• Every company in St. Pölten that has a "table football"- table (Wuzzler) puts it in front of the door on a certain day and anyone who comes by can play.

Ecstatic Dance provides a ritual experience in the psycho-social field of movement and encounter involving the whole body. It is all about the (re)discovery of the space of one’s own experience (Me), of the space of others (You) and of co-creation (Us). There are three basic principles: No talking on the dance floor. Be mindful of your own space and of the space of others. No alcohol, no drugs. The goal is to make me, you and us (or St. Pölten, Austria and Europe) more aware of our bodies. To encourage and demand free, wild, natural modes of expressing ourselves. A manifestation of the orgiastic and ecstatic to incentivise social reorganisation.

The controversial and not yet presentable Frauenplatz in St. Pölten should be given the opportunity and authority to live up to its name. This will need a lot of work: women and women’s regional projects; associations, artists, private individuals and politicians (all women, of course) in a constructive open dialogue; public presentations/rallies/demos in the Frauenplatz itself; ongoing workshops and process monitoring and more – much more. Put it all together and we’ll have a Frauenplatz that can really make a difference!

EU-Animales: One child, aged 12 or under, from a different EU country, preferably resident in St.Pölten or connected to the city in some other way, will be chosen to talk briefly about his or her favourite animal. Assisted by an artist from St. Pölten, the child will then go on to render that animal as a work of art.

EU-Streets: Streets/squares are turned into venues hosting different EU countries. For two weeks at a time between April and October, a street/square in St. Pölten’s inner city and a street/square in its suburbs will host one EU member country. To this end, they are decorated, illuYminated and/or filled with sounds in a manner characteristic of that country.

EU ROOTS – Y. The letter Y has served as a symbol of St. Pölten for a long time, going back as it does to the patron of the diocese of St. Pölten, St. Hippolytus. 400 school children from across the board of St. Pölten’s schools – primary, secondary, grammar schools – will be given professional assistance to create their very own ceramic Y in the former stoneware factory Wilhelmsburg.

Revisiting the history of political acivism in art from the 1960s, the exhibition Riot Revolutions puts relevant artists and their work centre stage – from Vienna’s “Aktionisten” and their anarchist performance Kunst und Revolution in 1968 to Central and East European artistic positions of the 1970s such as Mladen Stilinovic, Sanja Ivekovic and Russia’s P u s s y Riot.

For more individual responsibility and self-empowerment: European Spaces is a participative project aiming to develop alternative venues within public space where citizens can meet, become active, take the initiative and share information, and to integrate these venues. While project development is left to the citizens themselves, we provide whatever moderation is needed. Goals include the creation of functional venues in public space. We offer support during the brainstorming, evaluation and realisation phases and in the development of a wide variety of different participative projects.

From 2021, the only avowedly pan-European youth orchestra and the chamber-music ensembles formed from it wil be using its residency in Grafenegg to play a succession of concerts in unusual venues with partly new audiences scattered across the entire St. Pölten Culture Region. In 2024 these concerts will be streamed live to the other European Capitals of Culture.

Comparable to the EUYO, the European Union Youth Orchestra with its summer residency in Grafenegg, the European Youth Dance Company, with its seat in St. Pölten, is scheduled to become a touring company for young dancers from all over the EU. It will go on tour at least twice a year and will be a regular guest at international festivals and venues. The EUYDC’s dancers will be Europe’s cultural ambassadors in their home countries, in their own training institutions and on tour, living according to the motto “Unity in Diversity”.

Initiated in 2017, the Europaballett’s Eurotour is based on an international network that has already established partnerships with  Rijeka, Sopron, San Remo, Novi Sad and Osijek. The project, which is designed to be expanded to digitised outreach activities, will be continued until 2027. 2024 will mark a climax with a European dance festival characterised by a maximum of social inclusivity. An open air event and projects specifically designed for children are in the pipeline.

The artist couple Wilfried König and Lisbeth Löffler have been engaged on the Europe-wide project “Face Europe” since 2018. People from across the EU are having their portraits done while being interviewed; the whole process is captured on film. 57 finely crafted portraits and films have been made to date, all aiming to make the thoughts and feelings of Europeans inside the EU accessible. Capital Culture year provides an ideal framework for displaying them in an exhibition or in public space. www.face-europe.eu

How to persuade a veritable crowd of film makers to find their way to St. Pölten? By making the Festival Hall the venue for two renowned film award ceremonies. It would be a powerful sign of St. Pölten’s commitment to culture if the city were to host the Austrian Film Awards in January 2024 and the European Film Awards in December. Marking as they do beginning and end of Capital of Culture year, these award cermonies could bracket a host of events to do with cinema. There is no shortage of suitable venues for such events. The former Synagogue for instance could do a stint as an arthouse cinema and could easily accommodate workshops and select premieres.

In the late 90s there was a film workshop in St. Pölten which dealt with the city in documentary and artistic terms. For the cultural capital St. Pölten it would be an incredible enrichment to record the process towards becoming a cultural capital in sound and vision. Renowned filmmakers (Filmpreis St. Pölten) as well as amateurs (workshops and technical support) should be involved in the entire process.

At the centre of this series of interactive workshops for children and teenagers is a creative approach to the highly topical theme of water. For the group to do justice to this subject, biologists, musicians, a video artist and an art educator will be invited to assist in the creation of an audio and video installation. This will provide an artistic take on the miracle of water, the source of all life.

St. Pölten market day has been a recurring weekly event since at least the middle of the nineteenth century. It provides people with a chance to shop for local and “international” products. It is the ideal venue for a project that will be choosing a different dish every week as a frame to weave wreaths of national and international cultural histories around. You may be sure that companionable cooking and eating will be very much to the fore  on these occasions.

freedhome is a large-scale walk-on sculpture designed by Peter Bachler, which is meant to function as an “artwork for peace”. The sculpture comprises several parts, each of which is charged with symbolic meaning, such as the contrast between sexes, religions or nations. Its purpose is to transform “dark aggressive energies“ into their positive counterparts.

Political cartoons and cartoons critical of religion have provoked violent reactions in Europe and the wider world, raising the issue of taboos and the limits on what can legitimately be said. The Caricature Museum Krems offers its own take on the topic by convening cartoonists in the run-up to ECoC year and in 2024 at its location in Krems to  discuss the controversial topic of freedom of speech. This will include reflections on media history set against a changing political background.

The Funpark is a mobile event for young and old. The aim is to invite visitors* to the park and encourage them to try out and discover various sports and leisure activities. A classic exercise and health programme will be presented, but also exercises and workouts appealing to group dynamics and the latest trend sports (and equipment) can be used free of charge during this event. This park is managed by a team of health experts, sports clubs and sports teachers. Sportsmen and sportswomen from the region encourage to address, exchange and participate. Since fun should be the focus, active participation is offered, but not obligatory.

A future-oriented society presupposes a sustainable, eco-friendly lifestyle embraced by all its members. Futurama Lab will create research-based art works drawing on scientific studies to address social and ecological problems such as the climate crisis – problems that affect all of us, regardless of where we live or work. In terms of content, Futurama Lab takes its cue from UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals. Aimed at social inclusion, this multilevel project culminates in an exhibition and a conference.

“Glanz-Stoffe” will seek to establish itself as a festival for professional music and dance productions attractive to young audiences. It will network internationally renowned troupes with local venues to give the existing music and dance scene a shot in the arm.

Grätzellabor, which is planned to be operational at least until 2024, addresses issues of social coexistence by focusing on the two “Grätzels”[neighbourhoods] of Mühlweg/Kulturheim Nord and Linzerstraße/Löwenhof. Mobile structures, workshops and exhibitions of works by residents will be used to encourage local communities to engage with each other and to explore the history and the present-day potential of these areas. The results of this search for cultural identity will be brought vividly before visitors in 2024 in an interaction in public space between neighbours and local and international artists.

The goal pursued by this project is the expansion of autonomous green spaces and the networking of groups of people who are prepared to make an invididual effort to help construct such spaces. The highly motivational flagship project “Sonnenpark - Park der Vielfalt”, unparalleled in Europe, serves as a template for new, participatively tended and used green spaces in an urban and suburban context. Starting in 2020, our experiences at the Sonnenpark will be shared in low threshold meetings, workshops and other culture events – first at the Sonnenpark, later in European best-practice places and in 2024 in newly established venues in St. Pölten.

A path flagged with green markers runs through and around the city of St. Pölten. It starts in the Culture Quarter and continues to the inner city, taking in the University of Applied Sciences and the city’s parks. Individual sections are “urban oases” featuring a lot of greenery and the potential to be put to various uses. This makes the trail a green urban thoroughfare. Open to a number of changes – different guest countries, for example – it can become a recurring event and a sustainable project for many years to come.

Companies make the time of their employees available through multiple models. Employees who are interested in St. Pölten 2024 help voluntarily and the company gives them the time to do so. This initiative promotes interest in the European Capital of Culture and enables an active role in its implementation.

This project will let hikers form an impression of an early-medieval Carolingian refuge. The landmarks, which are mentioned in a document dating from CE 828, could easily be integrated into a hiking path. There are remarkable connections between the document and the facts on the ground. The focus is on St. Pölten, Karlstetten and Neidling.

The artists see topics featured in the ECoC year from a female perspective and speak up without fear or favour. Synergies realised through cooperation with musicians and writers, daughters all of them, will add great growth potential to this women’s network.
The women’s project Hippolyt und Töchter has been testing its wings since January 2019: artists from St. Pölten and environs have been showing their works in the windows of vacant shops, lighting up grey facades. In 2024 the start-up will move up a notch or two or three.

Convened under the patronage of the world famous magicians Thommy Ten and Amélie von Tass, both born in St. Pölten, the European Magic Conference will see the continent’s best magicians gather in European Capital of Culture St. Pölten. Care will be taken that alongside the stars of the scene representatives of the dark arts from each of the member states of the European Union will be invited. This, too, reflects the diversity of Europe’s cultures.

Fans of the science fiction saga "Star Trek" know it: the holodeck. This room functions as a pastime, for relaxation, but also as a learning and discovery environment, enabling an excursion into virtual worlds. Designed by experienced programmers, you can experience historical persons, achievements or historical events as well as fictitious scenes from world literature up close. The Holo-DEX is a multimedia space combined with a (graphical) database. Individual programs can be "loaded" and explored via a website or in the Holo-DEX. Two modes make it possible either to wander through the space (cf. exhibition) or to act interactively (cf. escape room).

St. Pölten and the Culture Region St. Pölten are certainly, as the saying goes, worth a journey. The entire region is marked by a great variety of widely differing types of landscapes. In addition to its great natural beauty it is remarkable for its diverse agriculture and the way generations of farmers have shaped each landscape. A speciality of these mostly family-operated farms is their traditional hospitality.
These family farms have a wide range of produce on offer, ranging from vineyards, orchards and the cultivation of vegetables and arable crops to animal husbandry, all of which are there to be experienced. In addition to wine and cider-type beverages served at typical outlets there is a broad variety of offerings for guests such as tours with donkeys and lamas, open-door farm visits, farmstay holidays, farming experiences and a host of farm activities such as breadmaking, gardening and fruit tree pruning.

Body Architects is a team of artists drawn from a wide range of fields, led by Hygin Delimat and united by their shared love of urban space and site specific work. Since 2015 they have been putting their own invigorating stamp on performances and art installations at the crossroads of architecture and physical performance. The project “House Beating” conjurs up memories of growing up in an environment marked by modern/Socialist/industrial Eastern-Europe style architecture, of which St. Pölten has more than its fair share. The group’s supercharged choreography uses space in a new and unexpected way.

Murals, large-format wall paintings and their messages are a dominant feature in many metropolises. By now this cross between street art and art in architecture has found international favour not only with the sprayer scene but also with planners and property developers. In 2024 this urban art form will be presented in all its aesthetic and political diversity.

Working in close collaboration with pupils and students, scientists and cultural workers will be using a “scientist & artist in residence” programme to formulate “youthful” approaches to solving problems arising from (inter)cultural coexistence in their own town and in Europe in general. Capital of Culture year offers a suitable stage for presenting both the results and their artistic realisation. The borders between reality and utopian visions are not clearly drawn here – and society as a whole is ready for a radical rethink.

In 2024, the St. Poeltner Dommusikverein transforms religious and cultural centres in St. Pölten and the Cultural Region St. Pölten into venues for great sacred music. The project involves representatives of different faiths, thus contributing to their getting to know each other better and to engaging in creative exchanges. There will be one cluster of events in spring and another in the autumn and the time in betwen will be filled with commissioning and premiering new compositions, stage appearances of artists from all over Europe and from outside Europe and events featuring collaboration with European Cities of Culture.

This project sets out to transform the content and the timing of the St. Pölten Week of Art and Science – now in its 8th year – into an international festival of art and science. At present this summer academy, scheduled to take place on four consecutive days, gives children and teenagers aged between 5 and 15 age-appropriate opportunities to sample a great variety of different areas of interest. Come the summer of 2024, it is hoped that the vision of a ten-day international festival for children and teenagers will have been realised step by step.

The international performance collective The Doing Group uses interventions, workshops and  interactive performances to get to the roots of St. Pölten’s hidden realities. Inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, they focus on residents and on views of the city that have previously been largely ignored.The project is designed to empower those residents to use their imagination and their memories to upgrade their own agency in the city.

Here, a loose sequence of individual European musicians leads to a serial emergence of the session. In the final result, all audio tracks including video recordings are brought together and published as an artwork.

Conceived as a citizen participation project, the Klangturm is to be replayed. Each of the 3 floors thematizes and presents the life worlds of a special age group. Children & adolescents, working people, pensioners design their rooms and invite you to discover them.

A new Kreativ Children’s Academy for Painting replaces the Kreativ Acting Academy. A group of artists already working at the Kreativ Atelier Melk wants to oversee this project. Children aged 10 and over are invited to register. The courses are funded by Lower Austria’s Kreativakademie.

"Kultur on Tour" is a travelling exhibition featuring artists from the "Culture Region” cities of Krems, Melk, Lilienfeld, Neulengbach and St. Pölten itself, as well as artists of foreign origin with links to these cities, and finally artists with sensory impairments. In thematic terms, the exhibition is all about the presentation of relationships, emotions and stories to do with the local cultural heritage, which highlight each place’s particular secrets, beauty, peculiarities and singularity from an artistic point of view.

In conjunction with artists from six European mid-sized cities the Künstlerbund is looking to establish long-term connections to wider Europe. The project will culminate in 2024 in the residency of six visiting artists from other European countries in St. Pölten and, conversely, the visit of six artists from St. Pölten to these European partner cities. The schedule includes participative formats,travelling exhibitions and a joint presentation in the St. Pölten City Museum as its fitting climax.

Who are St. Pölten’s new residents? Where did they come from? Why did they decide to up and leave? Together with the Center for migration research the two-tiered “Together we are Europe” project focuses on the years 2020 to 2023 to find answers to these questions. In addition to providing practical help to migrants and access to various networking programmes, it will devote itself through discussions and workshops to the analysis of the cultural and ethical challenges resulting from regional and global migration.

The two artists have proposed creating seven sculptures (in materials such as ceramics, wood or stone) with seven text tablets (stainless steel, with the text engraved) for seven locations in and around St. Pölten, all of which would be accessible 24/7. These locations are designed to serve as meeting points. An invitation will go out to artists in EU countries to create works on themes such as community, awareness formation, encounters, togetherness, the pleasure of discovery, dignity and enthusiasm, which will be placed alongside the sculptures.

The Velvet Revolution of 1989, when the cititzens of Czechoslovakia shook off the straightjacket of coercion and bondage without bloodshed, was epitomised in a luminous symbol: a blazing neon heart, installed by artist Jiří David on Prague’s St. George’s basilica. We are co-opting this idea in 2024 for the Capital of Culture. Rather than summoning us to drastic action, the original neon heart or a replica, installed either on the Klangturm or the spire of St. Pölten’s Cathedral, will proclaim the direction we need to take: towards peaceful co-existence and good neighbourliness.

Drawing is a language as simple as it is universal. An installation in St. Pölten’s public space presents drawings by artists from eight European countries as well as contributions from closer to home by projecting them onto an attractively styled facade. The public joins the fun by drawing on iPads and having their drawings animated by Tagtooltechnology. OMAi is supported by the Tagtool community’s international network.

The upper section of Kremsergasse (between house no. 1 and 13) is the oldest section of the shopping street. The small distance between the surrounding buildings as well as the slightly winding course lend this area a special flair. This can be additionally emphasized by a striking design of the air space. For this purpose, anchors are installed at shorter intervals (approx. 5m) in the buildings, between which wire ropes are tensioned. This covering serves as a support for "flying" art installations. The installations can be changed annually and thus offer artists the opportunity to design a rather unusual area, while at the same time creating a special sight in the centre.

Using the staff canteen as a flagship for the whole region? Many community caterers have been fighting a price war where the top priority was pile it high and sell it cheap; everything else was of secondary importance. Now that food and enjoyment of food have become an essential component in the quality of life, staff canteens have to keep up. The Capital of Culture project St. Pölten 2024 has to play its part on this front, committed as it is to strengthening the link between the working-class city of St. Pölten and its agrarian environment. It is inconceivable that these two partners shouldn't put their heads together and come up with something better in the culinary line.

With a view to turning staff canteens in and around St. Pölten into places where local produce may be enjoyed in good company, we will be putting together a detailed manual which draws on the Chamber of Agriculture’s knowhow and the expertise of its model canteen and includes advice from other practitioners and experts. The manual will comprise a set of practical tools and concrete offers of support and of attractive PR work for staff canteens willing to have a go at upgrading.

“Margins” are everywhere–not matter whether we are talking society, politics, territories or business. The authors invited to St. Pölten for this project will be commissioned to write something to do with “margins”: 27 perspectives on something that frequently tends to get overlooked. With chairmanship rotating among the different countries, St. Pölten wil be featuring something resembling a literary embassy between 1 January and 31 December 2024. Every two weeks a different author from each of the 27 member states will be assuming the role of ambassador  and will make the embassy a place for encounters and artistic debate.

The Melk Höfefest and the Melk Advent are social and cultural events whose artistic, folkloristic and culinary highlights attract and delight visitors from near and far. The programme of each of these events can be adapted to highlight specific characteristics of the Capital of Culture project.

Rather than the official pop charts, Memory Kollektiv Hot Hits concern themselves with the personal rankings and playlists of the residents of Langenlois. In this inclusive project they are invited to settle down in the comfortable atmosphere of a living room, indulge in memories of what they used to listen to, reminisce and of course listen to music in the company of friends. This will give us a local collective Top Ten.

Ein QR-Code auf der Speisekarte übersetzt diese in unterschiedliche Fremdsprachen. Der Anwender (Gast) fixiert mit der Kamera des Smartphones den QR-Code, wählt die gewünschte Fremdsprache aus und dann erhält er die Speisekarte in der von ihm gewählten Sprache. Zusätzlich werden die angebotenen Gerichte mittels Bilden hinterlegt.

Rye beer is one of Europe’s cultural assets, but the challenges its brewing involves have made this one of the industry’s best kept secrets. Armin Oppelt has the know-how required to establish a micro brewery in the Sonnenpark with a beer garden attached and is looking forward to devoting himself wholeheartedly to the project.

St. Pölten was and is a city of migrants. This theme will be at the centre of a project that will sift pertinent sources, evaluate data and conduct interviews in the time leading up to 2024. Story-telling groups and historical workshops will contribute to generating knowledge, uncovering marginalised (hi)stories and involving as many people as possible. Migration routes will be compared and urban spaces marked by migration outlined. Digital Storytelling is a tool that enables people to bring their stories into focus. They will be processed in multimedia formats, uploaded to the internet and displayed in suitable locations in analogue form in 2024.

People migrate and so do animals. The result of stress caused by climate change, shifts in animals’ habitats have been on a rapid increase in Europe and all over the world. The consequences are often unexpected. A special exhibition in St. Pölten’s Haus für Natur in 2024 will focus on nature on the move, casting light on this subject in all its diversity.

A positive attitude towards the age-old phenomenon of migration calls for an approach that is both new and innovative. The Pädagogische Hochschule NÖ, the City of Melk, the Province of Lower Austria and the Federal Ministry of Domestic Affairs have pooled their efforts to realise this goal in the new Centre for Migration in Melk, mc², which will become fully operational in late 2019/early 2020. Its services in the fields of migration and pedagogics are free for interested schools and other multipliers such as researchers and visitors.

Mother-Dome aims to translate cultural impulses into a broadly conceived, sociocultural and participative art project. The structure of the Mother-Dome sculpture, which covers roughly 5m² at the centre of St. Pölten’s Cathedral Square, serves as an information medium. Visitors step inside to trigger its interactive transmedial functions. Their interaction with sensory and dialogic control elements is translated after dark into light projected on to the walls of surrounding buildings allowing increasingly sophisticated philosophical tenets of visual culture to be realised.

mundart: SDGs light wants to let people whose origins have so far left them without sufficiently fluent German take a role in an exhibition in public space designed to give a boost to the ongoing dialogue about the themes of Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. The preconditions for this dialogue exhibition for barrier free communication in public space will be set up in the course of a preparatory year by workshop participants. New connections established between different groups will help to bridge gulfs within our  civic society and between regions.

A project sponsored by Museumsmanagement NÖ and the Donauuniversität will be devoted to exploring the history of Lower Austria’s ten oldest museums, including Melk. The results will be presented in a different form in each of the museums. Melk has opted for a Public Museum which aims to make its historical treasures and the history of the Melk region part of public life.

Music Office St. Pölten will be firing up up young people about music to make sure that the regional music scene keeps on going. It makes the potential of the St. Pölten music scene visible and, more importantly, audible and pursues the long term goal of transforming St. Pölten into a city of music. The Playground Orchestra uses playgrounds and their attractions as (percussion) instruments; "From seeming so to being so" casts a glance behind the scenes of the music business. All this is complemented by precisely targeted capacity building workshops for making sound tracks, overseen by musicians and producers both from the region (Michael Willer, to name but one example) and neighbouring European countries. Young people from all walks of life, including marginal groups, get to know the entire process of making music, from songwriting to sessions in the recording studio.

Music is a strong means to foster new regional identities. Twelve municipalities in and around the Dunkelsteinerwald forest and Göttweig Monastery unite to bring together cultural initiatives, associations and locals in a collaborative project based on existing resources to bring them on a higher level. Local communities are the cornerstone of engaging cultural events; the locals not only attend events but actively develop and host them.
In a sound installation city and countryside exchange places: sounds from the city are heard in the middle of the forest; sounds associated with nature find their way to central St. Pölten. In 2024 an international Audience Development symposium at Danube University Krems will also examine how the experience of the Dunkelsteinerwald musical experiment can benefit other European regions.

The international exhibition on display during autumn and winter in 2024 at the Galerie Daliko will illustrate a variety of different approaches to such themes as individuality, diversity and co-existence as they are lived in Europe’s different societies. The exhibition, which will show works by a single artist from each European country, will be making out a visual case for the acceptance of plurality and differences in a united Europe.

The close spatial proximity of people from different cultures with different life styles creates a host of opportunities for friction and conflict. These are often cast along the lines of the classic “natives vs. immigrants” stereotype.This project is looking to provide a template for solutions for this recurrent situation. Tenants in two St. Pölten tenement estates will be invited to join participation and communication processes designed to strengthen positive coexistence across cultural barriers. This is especially important in tenements where refugees recently granted asylum have moved in not long since.

An art project will be installed in each of the 11 districts of St. Pölten so that visitors are able to experience more than the inner city. The tour will take place with the LUP city bus (Hop on Hop off). Guests arriving by car will be guided to the Park & Ride car parks via a special guidance system. Guests arriving by public transport have the central access point at the railway station.

The highly topical theme of the Odyssey will be addressed in its manifold facets: wandering, tearing oneself away from one’s roots, flight, return, home, homecoming…The artist group JETZT wants to offer the public the opportunity to participate in their own odyssey and to make them understand what it means to be cast adrift, to have no home, not to know where to turn. JETZT members will wander around the inner city, persuading passers-by to join them for a while, to go with the flow. The documentation of this first phase will then be transformed into art in a second phase also overseen by JETZT.

Our partner country Estonia is well-known for the wealth of expertise that has been built up in its nature loving circles. There is a special focus on trees and forests, whose conservation and protection has been a Europe- and world-wide concern for ecological activists for a long time. Experts from the Baltics will share their knowledge with ECoC visitors in guided tours across the Kaiserwald and the Galgenberg and will go on to put this cross-border connection at the service of the environment.

St. Pölten will be transformed into an open-air gallery for a week. Buildings steeped in history will be lit up with projections and light installations telling different stories on a wide variety of subjects related to the building they are illuminating. Pupils, students and visual artists from the region will be using this project to address themselves to the past and the future of the St. Pölten region in the context of Austria and Europe and will go on to turn their ideas into visible projections.

Pianist Karl Eichinger will give an open-air concert with the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra entitled “European Perspective [Europäische Perspektiven], featuring works by Beethoven and Gershwin. Given that its ethnic diversity poses such great challenges for Bosnia Herzegovina, the European Union has a cultural opportunity and indeed an obligation to offer the region a European perspective.

The oratory “The Armed Man. A Mass for Peace” by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins (b. 1944) is dedicated to the victims of the Kosovo war. Dealing with the theme “war and peace”, it was premiered in 2000. In Capital of Culture year choirs and an orchestra of the BRG/BORG St. Pölten – something like 250 musicians in all – will perform this work. Text recitals and lighting technology will boost the effect of this impressive oratorio in an open-air production.

St. Pölten has afforded itself a publicly accessible cultural construction site in the traffic-calmed city centre. In addition to stylized bricks, with which visitors can create their own buildings and "walk" freely in public space, there are also large construction sets for text messages, huge "graffiti walls" for temporary paintings, and a wide variety of sound bodies for tonal experiments.

The story of St. Pölten will be told by movement theatre and will include both dark and golden times. The ensemble will consist of a mixture of professionals and amateurs (such as the "Civic Theater" of Landestheater NÖ). In order to implement the impulse of the solution energy of the second constellation (the first already took place in the city museum), it should be interactive and at the end encourage all spectators to dance along. A powerful possibility is to perform this piece several times a year in the individual districts of the city.

The exhibition focuses on an imaginative network of dissident artistic positions including painters such as Egon Schiele. In an astonishingly prescient way, these artists anticipated much that is familiar to us from today’s debates seeking to reform our lifestyles – sexual emancipation, spiritual special paths and alternative forms of social life such as the utopian artists’ colony Monte Verità in Switzerland. The exhibition project traces the tangled routes and interrelatedness of modern European artistic life designs, looking for insights that might be applied to our present situation.

St. Pölten's population. Faces, stories, memories. A local book of faces by and about St. Pölten's citizens. A digital reference book of former and present St. Pölten citizens is planned. Texts, sound recordings, videos are to be witnesses of a social development. So that we can remember them later.

Given that St. Pölten is home to so many renowned photographers, high-quality photographers’ associations and, last but not least, to Lower Austria’s top specialist photo shops and photo studios, it has to be a good idea to make it the venue of a large-scale photo festival. An invitation should be sent out to all residents of St. Pölten asking them to play their part and make their own contribution to a grand photographic mosaic depicting their city.

Victoria, Anna and Magdalena, all of them students at St. Pölten’s New Design University, have created a piece of cloth which is meant to help in making friends: Their “Gesprächsstoff” can be used as a low-key signal to out yourself as someone wanting to be talked up and to encourage others to take heart. This is sure to break down social barriers.

The rapid spread of ash die-back means we have to fell a large number of these trees in the Sonnenpark. This will create large open spaces that could be used for the planting of a new botanical garden in Lower Austria’s capital according to scientific criteria. Bearing in mind the aspect of intercultural exchange, the project will be developed in close contact with other European botanical gardens.

The gallery is creating a five-year platform for young artists working in painting, graphic arts and sculpture. 2020 will see the first annual, jury-adjudicated competition on the topic of “Europa daheim” for young artists studying at Austria’s art universities and schools. The five winning works will be presented in May each year and in both May and October in 2024.

In keeping with the reference to the original Pnyx, the place in Athens where the Ekklesiai or meetings of the people were held, artist Robert Jelinek’s version is a meeting place in the public space. His PNYX is a 36-square-metre, closed letterbox system complete with its own PO boxes. A competition will be held in collaboration with 27 institutions, festivals and associations to select tenants for these boxes from all 27 EU member states. The new tenants will be given keys to these PO boxes and postal addresses. This creates in St. Pölten a virtual, but thoroughly analogue postal European Union. The installation and the organised events deal thematically with reunion, Heimat, identity, migration and  other provocative subjects such as tax havens and the registration law.

The project comprises a one-month-long exhibition at the Town Hall (or the Municipal Museum) of short poems on A4-size panels. The main thing is that the poems are written in all the languages that are are currently being spoken in St. Pölten and in those that were spoken here at some stage in the past (together with a translation into German). The selection includes new poems by poetesses and poets as yet unknown to the public. Altogether there will be poems in something like 100 different languages. In exhibition month there will be a weekly recital of 20 or so poems given by actors, voice artists and/or mother tongue speakers from St. Pölten.

Cities are places of linguistic diversity. Unaccompanied, this diversity can lead to confusion of voices and problems of communication, ultimately to speechlessness outside one's own "speech bubbles". A multilingual translation tool can help. St. Pölten has translators at its disposal who translate submitted texts (for websites, information folders, menus, signposts, etc.) into many languages and make them directly accessible via app (QR code, e.g. on posters). In addition, workshops (real and elearning) provide the opportunity to learn and retrieve common phrases and simple communication. Society needs linguistic proximity and solidarity, to express oneself linguistically and to be understood by others is a guarantee for inclusion and community development.

Population growth, construction activities and climate change all have a particularly strong impact in urban areas. The two St. Pölten millstreams are ideally suited as recreational areas for nearby residential quarters, as play zones for toddlers, as oases of peace, as sports zones … There is a European dimension to the project in that it demonstrates how little time and logistical effort it takes, given goodwill and somewhere to start, to establish a recreation area right on your doorstep  and how little adjustment  is required to make it accessible to all.

Celebrating feasts and the enjoyment of art creates a sense of community. This is why puppet theatre Träumeland will be performing for people of all age groups and from all walks of life – in squares in the city, in the inner courtyards of private houses, on the meadow outside farms or on the banks of the Traisen. Used as transport for the props, a vintage car doubles as the stage on, inside and around which the festival of the arts unfolds: a music performance, puppet theatre, story telling and soap bubbles– it's all there. This Festival on Wheels [Das fahrende Festival] will be touring St. Pölten and its environs for three weeks during July and August 2024.

Several venues in St. Pölten and the Culture Region St. Pölten will be earmarked for projects to sensitise people to queer lifestyles. Top directors from all over Europe have addressed themselves to the topic of queerness, revealing its complexity and the challenges it entails. Panel discussions with experts complement the scheduled events and film screenings.

At "Quickstarter" we take over the crowdfunding idea for the realisation of events. In contrast to "kickstarter", "Quickstarter" is advertising for human capital. The required number of helpers for the preparation of events, including a description of what needs to be done, is given. It also indicates the number of participants needed for events to take place. In return, helpers and participants receive free tickets or discounts for the realization of events.

The compact 1-week training programme supports (above all) regional artists and cultural workers in the professional concretisation of local-specific project ideas. A (public) round table forms the prelude in terms of content, at which guests from the (inter)national art and culture scene to present their decentralized projects and experiences for discussion. Experts from the field of cultural work are invited to a daily (public) breakfast in a relaxed and personal atmosphere in order to pass on technical tips and practical experience on specific fields of activity. The concrete concept ideas will be refined step by step and prepared for implementation. Coaching appointments and round tables for the groups accompany the project concepts through to implementation.

St. Pölten has a globally unique landmark: its Klangturm (Tower of Sounds), which can be seen from a great distance and is a distinctive feature of the city’s skyline. It is in the nature of things that this tower needs to make itself heard. RRE’s activities will transform the tower as a radio transmitter and receiver into a European radio hotspot, establishing St. Pölten as a powerful voice in Europe.

Conversely, RRE will also bring Europe to St. Pölten, turning the Klangturm into a place for encounters through performative radio – “radio for ears and eyes” – radio workshops for children and teenagers, lecture performances, and talk formats in the spirit of good news. Twelve different international artists and art groups will be invited to create RRE’s 2024 program.

Let's remember what it was like when recording and broadcasting radio programs outside of known radio stations was even more illegal and therefore all the more exciting. Thanks to campus radio, every citizen can now apply for (and will probably get) airtime without any risk. But let's let the time of that time live up in this project, let the free scene have its say. Let's create a mobile retro pirate radio in our Radiokastl, living room and our heads. Let's form Street-Art-Sound and Word-Or-Schmaus by St. PöltnerInnen, for St. PöltnerInnen: uncensored, independent and (almost) forbidden.

Campus & City Radio 94.4 are the media face of St. Pölten 2024 and will make sure that all Europe can tune in to our city. In keeping with our leitmotif “Europe at home – Rescaling distances” we will set up a radio network to provide journalistic coverage of the activities of St. Pölten 2024 and lend media presence to the city’s artistic productions. Faithful to the  principles of community radio stations we invite residents to make themselves heard. In October 2024 we will put on a three-day festival/symposium at the Klangturm entitled Klangstadt, which promises to mark the climax of a year of intensive radio work.

The Kulturverein der österr. Eisenbahner, Sektion Maler St. Pölten, or, more precisely speaking, its participating artists, each put a work on display that deals with a European city, region, country or a special characteristic of that country. This creates a patchwork of regions that is sure to generate a sense of the unexpected and of surprise in those who study it. In addition, the members of the association will be spending a day in St. Pölten’s inner city painting Europe themed pictures.

Having searched through their attics for 16mm film reels, the participants in this project, assisted by the artist Stefanie Weberhofe, cut and process the found material, matching it with a statement on Europe. In the end, this collectively produced found-footage film is digitised together with its sound track and made available to cinemas, schools and other communities in the Culture Region St. Pölten.

In view of the increasing plurality of residents’ sense of belonging both to St. Pölten and/or its environs and, in many cases, to their countries of origin, this interdisciplinary participative project seeks to expand the definition of “Heimat”. All too often the term is used to convey an agenda of exclusivity. The project team and people who have come from other countries to live among us here will travel to the latter’s native countries. There they will work with local dance groups and organise miniature feasts on the ground. All this is headed for a “universal folkdance” which is going to be part of the real thing, Reframing Heimat event, choreographed by the renowned performance artist Simon Mayer. The culmination of this project will see several hundred dancers getting together in St. Pölten’s public space in 2024.

There are municipalities and towns in the vicinity of St. Pölten that boast steadily growing collections of historical material that are freely accessible online. These photographs, videos, souvenirs and mementoes document the genesis of the place in question and represent a significant aspect of the preservation of our cultural heritage. We now have the opportunity to pull together the existing topotheques and new examples that will have been added by 2024 in a metadatabank and store the cultural legacy of the individual municipalities and towns in a single treasure house.

The Renaissance Castle Schallaburg had its heyday as a vibrant centre of cultural and political life in the sixteenth century. In 2024, in collaboration with a European partner, the castle, by then in its 50th year as an exhibition venue, will demonstrate that utopian thought and action are still relevant today and must be treated accordingly. The Renaissance is understood in this historic location as the catalyst of a European movement of comprehensive rejuvenation – or indeed, as the name implies, of a rebirth, which took place both on a local and a transnational level. Of crucial importance in all this was the establishment of an autonomous life space, which sought to shake off the dominance of cities in the search for solutions to urban crises.

Sports and art do not, in the eyes of most people, have a lot in common. This project will be looking to combine the two to their mutual advantage. A wooden skate ramp in the form of a sculpture will be built in Krems’s Stadtpark. While artworks may not normally be stepped on or even touched, the point of this sculpture is to used by as many skaters as possible. The skate ramp doubles as a symbol of European unity and welcomes skaters from all over Europe.

A boat ride along the largely forgotten remains of the Limes, the border fortifications of the Roman Empire, with the Danube’s river kilometre 2024 – believe it or not – bang in the middle. A festival of European music, Flusskilometer 2024 will celebrate the pleasures of give and take as enacted by the styles of European music on their cross-border journeys from north to south,  East to West and vice versa. That universally understood idiom – the sound of bagpipes, brass music and percussion – will delight audiences both on board river craft and at landing stages.

In May 2024 the waste opera “Müll – Summe menschlicher Götterdämmerung” [Waste – Essence of the Sun Setting on Mankind] will be staged near St. Pölten’s scrapyard. The performance will last 48 hours without a break and will include diggers, a construction crane ballet, lighting effects and a banquet happening. Participating artists come from Estonia, Belorus (Alex Faley) and Lower Austria(Niederösterreichische Tonkünstler). The focus is on the relationship between what is still useful and what can be thrown away – with special reference to the arts. An obviously related issue is the question of sustainability and our responsibility for our environment.

“Silverboys”, ideally premiered in a vacant factory building in St. Pölten or Melk, will put the audience face to face with four elderly has-beens, who are now eking out a meagre existence on the margins of our affluent society, totally engrossed in tending their lifelong lies. Using the devices offered by comedy, “Silverboys“ is designed to shine a light on our innate dependence on masquerade, a device that helps us all to bear the divergence of reality and appearance and stops us being overwhelmed by it.

Members of more than 100 nations live in St. Pölten. Children of different nationalities certainly meet in kindergarten and primary school, but in many cases that is it.  “Sing Along, Europe!” will collect children’s all-time favourites from as many different cultures as possible and publish them as an illustrated songbook complete with CD. The children’s songs will be arranged for orchestra and recorded by the Tonkünstler Orchester.

This project, developed by mezzosoprano Generose Sehr and photo artist Bernhard Brenner will set up a connection between European Capitals of Culture, between music and visual art, between what is foreign and what is familiar, between different styles old and new. Up-and-coming young composers and visual artists will put together works on the theme of “borders”. These will then be worked into four-to-five-minutes-long pieces for a classical/experimental voice with instrumental accompaniment and a matching projection.

This project is designed to be realised in all EU countries and focuses on showing how much things that seem different at first sight can have in common. All sculptures for instance will be using the same material – “float.glass” – but each country will be choosing a different colour or shade. In all cases, the sculptures will be fully accessible and their ground plans will be specific to each nation. In addition, “lectures” given by well-known personalities drawn from such fields as art, politics, faith, + religion, science and philosophy will be given on site.

The BodenKulturPfad St.Pölten is designed to take in between six and eight different stops integrated into the city's network of hiking paths and bike paths and/or the route of the Lup city bus. The point of such an educational trail is to show what soil is made up of, how it has come to be what it is in the course of cultural history and how essential for life it is. It is designed to increase awareness of the topic.

We want to set up a fruitful dialogue between philosophy and theology, dealing with topics that exercise society, such as intercultural co-existence, the challenge posed by Islam, the Judaeo-Christian heritage or European values, as well as the pressing questions that go with all human existence. There will be an essay competition in which all students will address a given topic. The first round will be in St. Pölten, then in a 2nd and 3rd stage the same process will be extended to Austria and other German speaking countries.

A city lives with and from a multitude of noises, sounds and tones. During this project we want to search for them. In the form of a city safari, equipped with appropriate equipment, participants can get to the bottom of the nature of a sounding city. After an appropriate inspection and processing, the captured "exhibits" arrive at the sound archive, which is accessible to the general public via the website and in a suitable exhibition space. In addition, the acquired sounds can be used to compose and perform their own sound works.

What do St. Pölten and its environs have to offer for their own residents and for visitors to the future Capital of Culture 2024? What social and cultural offerings are already there? How can they be brought to people’s attention in a way that makes them accessible to everyone? These are the kind of questions that will be raised by the project Sozialraum Region St. Pölten ~ GeoData. The insights gained in this way will provide the basis for the next stage in the analysis of social space which will identify Hot Spots and Not Spots.

Specialising in contemporary art and performance art, Kunstraum Niederösterreich is our ECoC satellite in the heart of Vienna. It will launch a format which combines aspects of an international expert-studded talk show and performances. Sparring Partners will explore the productivity of the contrast between political attitudes and artistic positions. The series will focus on such controversial issues as Europe and “Heimat”, felt by some to be divisive but seen as a source of identity by others.

The classic "speaking corner" invites citizens to freely express their own opinions on chosen topics. The "speaking corner 24" is a place open 24 hours a day where citizens can make their voice heard throughout Europe. This is technically realised via webcams. Depending on the project decision, these recordings can either be followed live on a website or recorded and played back at any time. Of course, other "speaking corners" can also be set up in other cities.

In addition to the so-called "high" and "free" culture, there is a culture of social fringe groups that has so far received little attention. Different social milieus produce different cultural and artistic skills. The idea behind "Spectaculus" is to discover, promote and make them accessible to a broad population. In the form of talent scouting, all social worlds are invited to present their achievements. At the same time, social fringe groups are to be motivated to work together on a show programme. In addition to music, dance, theatre, sporting performances and group-dynamic participatory offers, craft, stage design, textile and culinary ideas will flow into this spectacle and make this event an unforgettable experience for visitors and actors. In addition to the project result, the process creates a sustainable, social added value for all participants.

The game is the only form of activity that allows fearless, diverse exploration and connection. Man discovers the world through play, learns and grows through play. Every time we play, a world opens up where everything that prevents us from unfolding our potentials in everyday life disappears. When we really play, we experience no pressure or coercion. When there is nothing more that oppresses us, fear disappears and makes room for a feeling of life and happiness. We are planning a mobile collection, lending and mediation of indoor and outdoor games. This play bus is to be set up, administered and accompanied by a pedagogically trained team. Beside regular Events (approximately around meetings of the culture capital), playgrounds, parks, schools, kindergartens, nursing homes, social mechanisms are to be played on purposefully. Games open development spaces for all people, create solidarity and challenge and they are fun.

In an attempt to make comprehensible what now seems to defy understanding, St. Pölten City Museum will put on an exhibition in 2024 on the city and its environs during the Nazi era. The regime’s perpetrators and victims will be presented in model case studies and their motives for collaboration or resistance will be analysed and outlined. We start at the local level (prehistory, protagonists on the ground), move on to the region (Arbeitsdienst, relations with the “Gauhauptstadt” Krems, concentration camp Melk) and end with the transnational dimension (Where did the forced labourers come from? Where did St. Pölten’s men die as soldiers in the Wehrmacht? Where were St. Pölten’s Jews murdered?).

Scholary appraisal through DÖW, International Research Institutes, all of St. Pölten´s academic institutes.

For each of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, companies or organizations are sought in St. Pölten that make a significant contribution to achieving these goals. They are published in the media.

St. Pölten boasts a treasure trove of both old and modern/contemporary inscriptions that make a significant contribution to the outward appearance of the city and its suburbs. This project is inspired by the wish to document St. Pölten’s unique typographic character in pictures. These pictures will be uploaded to a blog and posted on an ongoing basis to social media channels. They will also be given an analogue existence in the form of a series of posters and picture postcards. All this, supplemented by an app, will act as a standing invitation to visitors to discover these inscriptions in the course of a stroll around the city.

Inspired by Gioconda Belli’s novel “The Republic of Women“, in which a women-only party assumes power and fills all government posts, and in view of the current relations between women and men, St. Pölten is to be “governed” exclusively by women for one month. Mayor, heads of departments, directors, CEOs, editors-in-chief etc. will resign (symbolically) from their posts, making room for deputies, staff members and other competent women, who will assume – after appropriate preparation – their posts for this period.

What does it mean to be homeless? Having to spend the night under the open sky, in public space? In summer and in winter? In 2024, we would like to invite St. Pöltners of all walks of life to join us in a temporary “occupation” of underused public spaces in the city. Traffic islands, green buffers and suchlike will become meeting points for people with a social conscience over four nights in the course of the year. How important is it to have that proverbial roof over one’s head? This will be explored in round tables, presentations, film screenings and soup kitchens. Don't forget your sleeping bag.

Permanent, heavy bar tables serve in the city as small "places of encounter and discussion" and are culinarily looked after by the surrounding restaurants. The regulars' tables are especially frequented by locals and the locals are motivated to have discussions about Europe and St. Pölten. The locations are spread over the entire city area. The St. Pölten tables are located in natural centres, at crossroads, on busy streets but also in unusual places.

Several projects will be launching creative interventions into St. Pölten’s cityscape. Three examples.“KreaTIEF Garage” (The most important underground car parks, parking decks and multi-storey car parks will be made more attractive by the addition of scent islands, visuals, clips, sounds, etc.) LASERDOME (a cutting-edge laser net complete with sound and visuals will be cast over the entire city – all of the city’s landmark buildings will be included and additional reference points created). For the duration of Capital Culture year, the KLANGTURM [Sonic Tower] will be transformed into a LEUCHTTURM [lighthouse, beacon] whilst at the same time the fascination of darkness will be made palpable by means of the container design surrounding the Klangturm.

SchöpfungsgeschICHten, with its pun on ICH, ego, I, is an interactive photo exhibition that is looking to create a counterpoint to the ideology of limitless growth and profit maximisation whatever the cost to humankind and the environment. The exhibition – predominantly aimed at children and teenagers – is looking to focus attention on human dignity, responsibility for the creation and the duty of care we all have towards life itself. Rather as in an online debate, it will be possible to post comments about every photo on an “opinion pinboard” – a procedure that will allow all who want to get involved to take the role of either teacher or student.

"Story Dealing" describes constructivist projects which, due to their structure and structure, aim to expand the range of what we call "reality". "Story Dealing" forms reality: In our story we tell of the essence of a city that leads an unconventional, unconscious life next to buildings, streets, parks and people. The soul of the city St. Pölten (scientifically referred to as an urban bio-amorphous field) is more than the sum of its parts, it is formed by our conscious thoughts, emotions and actions. By a new scientifically founded measuring method, the city soul can be made measurable by a combination of seismic and similar kirlian photographic methods.

STP Vips will transform 27 outstanding, but all-but-forgotten citizens of St.Pölten into pavement images, which will be displayed to pedestrians from April to September 2024.

EU-Gone 2024 will put up life-size effigies of emigrants from St. Pölten. Positioned at highly frequented locations such as the Main Railway Station, they will display the colours of those nations St. Pöltner emigrants have traditionally favoured.

SIX PACK – STP Industry Founders focuses on six industrial magnates – Austin, Gasser, Salzer, Schüller, Urban and Voith – who moved to St. Pölten in Austria’s late-nineteenth-century Gründerzeit. Using a former factory hall (Voith, Glanzstoff…) as a venue, video installations and large-format images will be telling the family history of these people in the summer of 2024, garnished with personal anecdotes.

A number of relevant hotspots in St. Pölten and the region will be jointly developed and transformed into a platform for a dedicated and open-minded “street art scene”. Planning and implementing such a wide-ranging concept requires continuous long-term commitment at different levels for an estimated three to five years. Overlaps between the various themes specific to this scene (graffiti, skateboard, hip-hop, punk alternative) will give the project the desired area-wide effect.

Street Art and/or Street Painting is an art form that provides a stage in public space for talents all over the world. It is inclusive, and it brings people of all generations, irrespective of age, sex, race, nationality and religion, together. The Capital of Culture project will create the preconditions where residents of St. Pölten and its environs can stay connected with other people across provincial and state borders to work on joint street art projects.

The "Take P-ART! Leitfaden" is produced in collaboration and coordination with the representatives of the 2024 European Capital of Culture, NÖKU Kulturvermittlung, as well as numerous representatives of the independent regional art/cultural scene (and in some cases also the education/social sector).

This awakens the desire for participative project ideas, offers profound know-how and above all professional step-by-step support in the conception, development and realisation of participative project ideas - embedded in (regional) reference examples and the experience knowledge of the (supra)regional scene. The 30-page brochure is airy and light in language and design, awakens joy in participative formats in cooperative settings - and supports submitters of (smaller) projects and art/culture mediators in the professionalisation of their project ideas and their realisation.

The Viennese dance teacher Benno Schwarz, who has been running a dance club in St. Pölten for several years now, wants to insert his idea of“souvenir dancing” into the programme of Capital Culture year 2024. He wants to induct groups of tourists into the art of the waltz. In this way, they will acquire a piece of Austria’s culture and history, which they will be free to take home with them and pass on.

A "co-shopping space" is envisaged, i.e. a place where artists and producers of regional products can offer their exhibits, works and goods for sale. Through joint use and support of the city shelf, as well as through support from the Capital of Culture, effort and costs are kept within reasonable bounds (the work and costs incurred are divided among all participants). Important: the city shelf should refer to the offer of regional art, culture and crafts and should become a crowd-puller in the context of cultural creation.

At one stage the main transport link connecting St. Pölten and Krems, the Landstraße 100 will become the venue for a concerted artistic intervention in public space. A host of artists from Austria and from elsewhere in the European Union will “energize” the roughly 22 km long stretch of road between the two cities, which were once in competition for the title of provincial capital.

The Tischlerei Melk addresses the topic of home making in an ethnically diverse Europe, with its tension between migration and the simultaneous desire for cultural belonging. People who have moved from third countries to St. Pölten and its environs will act as co-curators and invite ensembles from their countries of origin into the Tischlerei, which will then have been transformed into a living room. As warm-up acts, the first living room concerts will take place in 2021.

Taking their cue from our concept of radically lived hospitality, artists Melika Ramic and Johanna Figl fuse an international cuisine delivery service with a performance involving people who have escaped from oppression and persecution, often in dramatic circumstances. Anyone ordering food typical of Syria, Iraq, Bosnia or Chechnia will get precisely that – plus stories told by the delivery people, presented in scenic form in the customers’ own home.

The Glanzstoff Real Estate LLC wants to undertake a careful revitalisation of the boiler house, the turbine hall and the remains of the Glanzstoff spinning mill. Eva Bakalar’s supplementary project idea provides for adding horizontal and vertical layers of plants to the old industrial buildings and the entire Glanstoff premises. As this European gardening project is meant to present plants from all EU member countries, all 28 (27?) countries will be asked to donate plants or to stage a presentation in the building. The goal and the added value of this project is in sensitising the public to the significance of green spaces in urban contexts.

This installation uses the common-or-garden lift to raise existential questions of philosophy. Many people prefer using the lift rather than the stairs. What a lift does is to deprive us of autonomous movement, it hems us in and dictates the speed at which we move. The space inside the lift doubles for the state and its structures and the passengers for the citizens who submit to rules and regulations. Every visitor to the installation is encouraged to discern what lies behind life in their native country with its structures and patterns. The lift may also be taken as a symbol for Europe, which persists in isolating itself from the rest of the world.

This dance-and-music performance takes its cue from annually recurring feasts celebrated by different cultures and from the fact that many elements of these feasts seem to be universal. The perfect feast arranged by and for children from the age of 8 could be a symbol of coexistence in a pluralistic European society or a multicultural city such as St. Pölten. It is concerned with diverse rituals but no less so with the individual ideas of children on the spot.

The environs of St. Pölten alone boast a unique cluster of four monasteries, run by three christian religious orders, which had – and still have – a hand in shaping Europe: the Benedictines in Melk and in Göttweig, the Cistercians in Lilienfeld and the Augustinian Canons in Herzogenburg. To showcase the role they played in the development of Europe, these monasteries will establish a networked platform that allows visitors to experience the diversity of monastic life in great detail. As spiritual havens and highly differentiated cultural centres they are adept at transnational communication and at making themselves available to people on the ground – including those who have no close ties to the church.

The Lilienfeld monastery sets off in search of its own roots in an exhibition with the motto “Europa daheim – Rescaling Distances”. It delves into its own history to show how Cistercians travelled from monastery to monastery to exchange knowledge and expertise. The exhibition is accompanied by a programme of classical music which will unfold throughout 2024.

The St. Pölten pop star was the first Austrian to make it into the American charts in the 1950s with a song about the sailor boy she advised to stop his dreaming. It turned the young singer into a pop idol whose memory is still cherished by many of her old fans. At the centre of this project is a revival of Lolita’s world in a midsummer harbour event.

Behind the walls of St. Pölten’s cathedral and and the bishop’s seat lies a world filled with stories of human destinies. Pilgrimage routes, small devotional and/or memorial shrines known in Austria as “Marterl” and wayside chapels are testament to religious life in the country. The project, which will comprise film and video installations, sets out in 2024 to throw light on this highly ramified, transnationally relevant aspect of ecclesiastic history

Rather than concentrating on St. Pölten’s inner city, the project embraces the city’s ten other, more rural districts, whose residents have tended to develop an identity defined by their immediate surroundings. Artists from all over Europe will be invited to provide central locations in these districts with interactive fun-fair attractions of the merry-go-round type. Propelled by muscle power, it is hoped they will prove genuine magnets.

With the involvement of the Culture Region's inhabitants, a continuous smorgasboard is to be created over a length of 25 km on the S33 expressway. From Aelium Cetium to the Danube Limes, from the Danube outflow through the Traisental wine-growing region to the city centre of St. Pölten. The aim of this project is to create the longest smorgasboard in the world. The event, planned as a "Green Event", is intended to place the cultural diversity of the Culture Region St. Pölten into discourse of the European dimension.

An artist, a cameraman and an anthropologist document in videoform places for encounters such as community centres in the marginalised districts Molenbeek (BE) and Torpignattara (IT) and neighbourhood projects in small Austrian and South Tyrolean villages. The videos will be shown in St. Pölten in tandem with a participative project allowing visitors to get in touch with people on the ground.

As it stands, there is no institution in St. Pölten where questions relevant to civic society can be continuously reflected on and renegotiated, using a broad range of tried and proven cultural techniques. This state of affairs is unworthy of a (provincial capital) city and needs to be addressed straightaway.

Proposal # 1
“Everyday-art-culture-venue St. Pölten“: one possibility is a provisional solution à la Krischanitz, such as that used at the old Kunsthalle Wien. The WUK model would be ideal, but even a container settlement, a storey in a multi-level car park or, of course, a vacant building, always providing they could legally be used for meetings, might be practicable for societal debates.

Proposal # 2
Working title “Vertical St. Pölten”: Comparable to Belgrade’s legendary Oktobarski salon or, less steeped in history, “soho Ottakring”, are several currently unused premises and places we often walk past without noticing them. Buildings that belong to this category are some Emmaus branches, the Jewish Synagogue, care centres for the elderly and handicapped...

Proposal # 3
Weather permitting, a public brunch could be organised every other Sunday, maybe organised by the Emmaus community. Residents of care homes and Emmaus institutions, politicians and people from other cultures will be given personal invitations to join long tables set up somewhere like the Rathausplatz and eat, drink and be merry like men and women everywhere. This could  be an opportunity for institutions and initiatives to put themselves forward and tell the public about their work and the day-to-day problems they have to cope with.

A web-based time-sharing platform is developed that offers voluntary activities (time services) and products (time goods). Time accounts can be recharged during events. Authorized time providers (organizers) can issue time units to participants. Participants can in turn make their free time available to other organisers or participants. On the part of the project management, time goods are exchanged for time units (online time shop). These time goods are made available by the organisers in the form of tickets or vouchers.

The Tonkünstler Orchestra Lower Austria comprises musicians from 26 different countries – the European idea and the idea of integration on a transnational level are visibly part of the orchestra’s DNA. A programme of 12 concerts in 2024 is designed to pay homage to the ECoC year: the orchestra’s choice of compositions, soloists and conductors is based on the twelve countries which have hosted European Capitals of Culture in the past, paying tribute to Europe’s cultural diversity. At each concert, musicians from EU countries other than Austria will be specially featured.

Furthermore, the internationally well-known Austrian composer HK Gruber has been commissioned by the orchestra to honour the ECoC year with a half-hour composition on the theme of the workers’ movement.

In September 2023 the Tonkünstler Orchestra will make the newly revamped Cathedral Square the venue for a  participative format in the form of Orchestral Karaoke (the Domplatz  - Cathedrals Square - as the ultimate karaoke bar!), 2024 will see an event entitled Symphonic Mob, featuring an invitation to all to join a musical flash mob.

The spire of the imposing, 14th-century Frauenbergkirche in Krems/Stein will be converted by 2024 into a state-of-the-art competence centre for history and political education. Augmented Reality will be only one of a number of tools for knowledge sharing. Restored courtesy of the City of Krems, the spire will become a place for dialogue, where the past is made accessible under different perspectives for students and young adults.

This new festival format sets itself two main goals: it wants to grow organically and integrate the local and regional communities. Opening up new possibilities for the arts, the annual Transformation Festival will be one huge “get-together” for the residents of the city and the Culture Region St. Pölten. For that extra touch, St. Pölten will invite people from all over Europe to make themselves seen and heard at the festival. All that is needed to make this happen will be provided: international collaborations, talk forums, exchange activities, artists-in-residence programmes and artistic formats that invite participation in both design and execution.

The motto that sums it all up is “transformation”. St. Pölten encourages its residents to understand public space as something to experiment with, something to reshape, something  to change in a playful communal effort: something to give a whole new quality. As residents do this, they will rediscover  the potential of their city – and of themselves. There will be specially equipped Transformation Stations, where visitors are invited to experiment with their own appearance, a metamorphosis that will be helped along by actors and performers. Live bands, dance karaoke and poetry slams all make it that much easier for everyone to join the fun. And at night there are all those pop-up clubbing locations where DJs, live acts and performance theatre offer their own irresistible attractions.

Even the preparations for the festival are remarkable for inviting a high degree of participation.  Artists-in-residence give workshops in music, design, performance and the fine arts. Together with representatives of the local art scene, of schools, universities, the social services and companies, they take to programme work like ducks to water. Vacant business premises are given a new lease of life. Students of design and architecture, apprentices and craftsmen (and -women!) create the infrastructure needed for a weekend where residents can present the ideas they would like to see coming to life in their city. Street art, visuals and light art all contribute to a changed environment. Audience participation and the regular programme are like identical twins: really hard to tell apart.

The festival will again be part of the St Pöltners’ sense of identity as a manifestation of change, joie de vivre and the many-layered exchanges taking place within the city, the region and in cooperation with the city’s European partners.

Trash Diaries addresses the topics recycling and redesign in an attempt to encourage the public to avoid, reduce or reuse waste. An international open call invites people working in the creative industries to develop (fashion) articles made from waste or superfluous materials. A jury will select 15 items. The project uses conceptual fashion photography presented in a poster campaign in St. Pölten for an intervention in the market-oriented consumption mechanism and provides information on topical societal issues. It does so by providing poster and object art with new possibilities for intervening in public space.

This dance project is about desire, the story of Ulli Ullmann, a woman in a wheelchair and the nature of desire. The dramatury is based on conversations with the “wheelchair user” Ulli Ullmann and the way she as an individual confronts the topics of sexuality and eroticism. In the process, much deeper layers of interpersonal and social relationships are revealed and highly topical questions concerning desire, feminity and aesthetics are raised.

The project portfolio (eXmedia, #digitalnatives/VolXmedia, baroXmedia, EUTOPIA, XR LAB) is based on basic content modules that are an ever present part of the FH St. Pölten’s courses Media Technology and Digital Design – Experimental Media. Project sponsor Professor Markus Wintersberger and his committed team of media technologists, media artists and scientists have realised a host of different projects over the last years in close collaboration with national and international partners. This will allow the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten to put the considerable potential of its staff and students and its power of technological innovation at the service of the Capital of Culture region of St. Pölten as a transformation hub.

The city establishes a public city garden in the north of St. Pölten (former "Glasscherbenviertel"). Participants receive a defined cultivation area for a monthly contribution (commitment 1 year). The contribution partly covers support and running costs. The yield benefits the participants. During selected events, natural/processed city garden products can be purchased.

The artistic vision underlying this project is to create an interactive picture of the flow of migration which made St. Pölten’s Glanzstoff precinct possible and to present it at the former Glanzstoff factory. Tracing the migration movements that have been shaping the lives of unskilled and skilled labourers since 1904, the year of the foundation of the Glanzstoff, forms the arc along which the project“ urban mobility in transition” is organised. It will be realised in constant contact with several European universities.

Just as the city bus once brought us through St. Pölten's city centre, we want to develop and operate a mobile VELO bus ("vélocipède"... fast foot) as a common means of transport along a fixed route, at fixed times. The VELO bus consists of a control and drive unit (for "bus drivers") and several modular docking drive units (for passengers). Visitors and residents of St. Pölten can cycle through the city comfortably and safely with the VELO bus (weatherproof version). Additional headphone connections provide information about the city and the current cultural scene. If the VELO bus is popular, further units and tours (VELO school bus, VELO Traisenbus, VELO event bus) can be considered.

Special properties and locations in St.Pölten will be covered before and during St.Pölten 2024. The wrapping is of high quality and artfully advertises one of the artistic highlights.

At the centre of this project is a selection of socio-geographical village stories from St. Pölten’s Glanzstoff precinct dating to the present or the recent past (since 1963). Audio files of authentic narratives and interactive maps that provide access to a wealth of socio-geographical data of all kinds will be put at the disposal of visitors. Maps and stories together will conjure up the social geography and the history of the precinct in all their controversial glory.

The Wesely House will be a real virtual building, sustainable and permanent, with a changeable spatial function. The existing car elevator in the house serves as a virtual means of transport to all countries. Thus the cultural impact is maximized and a minimal ecological foot print is left behind.

Assisted by artists, adolescents and young adults engage with momentous European issues such as the sustainable supply of energy and mobility, the eco-friendly use of the environment and peaceful co-existence. Art, street-art, music, video art, poetry, rap, DIYZines and performance all conspire to recharge the concept of sustainability with emotion and passion and to make it real. Art manifests itself in public space in such forms as sculptures, dance performances, flashmobs and social murals. Social murals, as their name implies, are murals with a social message. They pop up in unexpected places throughout the city, conveying a positive message, a credo, an attitude. Or our appeal “you only need to change directions”. Local and international artists will collaborate with institutions, civil-society platforms and schools to stake out an artistic sustainability trail across the city focusing on the “good life” and on the “city of the future”. Partly rehearsed, partly spontaneous, this collaboration will include such well established local formats and institutions as the Jugendklub, the Festspielhaus St. Pölten, schools and the youth centre Steppenwolf; supraregional players such as the Art School Herbststrasse Vienna, ImPulsTanz Vienna International Dance Festival, University of Art and Design Linz; and international organisations such as the European Art Federation, Green Art Lab Alliance Amsterdam and the sustainable Art School Stockholm.

„Wadiwuk & Suvi“ is a science entertainment programme for all the family, which presents societally relevant topics of the partner Capitals of Culture online, for instance on YouTube™. The hosts are three puppets: Wadiwuk, a nosy, cheeky monster; Opa, always ready to visit relevant places, people and projects with his grandson Wadiwuk, and Suvi, Wadiwuk’s self-assured Estonian pen pal (operated and voiced by an Estonian puppeteer). Puppet theatre is an excellent way to provide audiences with an entertaining glimpse behind the scenes of the two European Capitals of Culture 2024.

In the project’s preparatory phase, different printing blocks will be made of noses, eyes, facial contours, hair, mouths and backs of the head. This will allow participants in the actual printing workshops to make prints of their own heads by hand. The main focus here is on diversity, community and society. It would be helpful if the project could be expanded to involve artists from abroad.

“We are still us” is a colourful installation made up of women’s apparel, which is dedicated to the city’s women. It is looking to span the gulf between women in the past and their present and future sisters. The installation will be staged in the former Glanzstoff factory. In the run-up, ads  will be placed in Lower Austrian media asking St. Pölten’s womenfolk to donate clothes towards the installation – ideally resulting in one item per St. Pöltnerin.

A unique means of expression, puppets are waiting to breathe life into European images. The project comprises puppeteering courses at elementary and advanced stages, drama courses that expand into stage technique, lighting and sound, the acquisition of a basic set of puppets and establishing an amateur drama group, which will write, rehearse and perform its own plays dealing with topical political and social themes.

NMS Viehofen is a very special school whose students come from a wide variety of lifeworlds and linguistic backgrounds. The theatre group Nordlichter will be engaging the students in a joint exploration of the stories of their origin, of their dreams and of their traumas. In close collaboration with schools in Mostar they will attempt to come to grips with war as a phenomenon and to develop cross-border peace projects.

Unlike those of the postwar era, social and political processes today evolve in a much more complex and less comprehensible manner. It is therefore all the more important to grant profile and identity to Time by spinning the tale of its fascinating history. In 2024 Haus der Geschichte will be asking pertinent questions in a major exhibition entitled “The modern time regime”: How did that time regime evolve? What are its effects? Since the eighteenth century that regime has made itself felt in a decoupling of the past from the present, in the singularisation of stories to creat abstract “history”, the establishment of a culture of musealisation and remembrance and of the idea of a future utopia to which all roads lead. Can this type of temporal regime be allowed to go on and, if that is the case, how is this to be done? In close contact with the exhibition the Tonkünstler Orchestra Lower Austria will develop a synaesthetic concert format which embraces the fine arts, literature and performance art.

The (virtual) Literaturhaus Europa sets out to explore the influence of Artificial Intelligence on our lives. Young people from ten different countries, working as roving reporters in the setting provided by eljub (Europäische Jugendbewegungen [European Youth Movements]), provide copy on this subject. Dialect poets and international spoken-word performers put AI (Artificial Intelligence) centre stage in their joint acts. A mobile “Speakers’ Corner” tours the St. Pölten Culture Region, inviting audiences to engage in a debate with speakers. Video clips featuring interviews with writers in ELit partner cities are aired and uploaded to a website conceived as a virtual room together with a selection of project texts. Every year participants review what they have achieved at the Europäische Literaturtage.The climax is scheduled for 2024, when all the elements mentioned above will be pulled together in St. Pölten.

Capital of Culture Year 2024 will see an itinerant exhibition in St. Pölten and Krems and a book drawing attention to the significant role women have played in the sciences — and to the powerful resistance they have had to overcome in order to do so. Artist Martina Gansterer has submitted 50 inventions and discoveries made by women, all of which enrich our lives in one way or another to this day, to close scrutiny. They will all be brought to life in the exhibition and the accompanying book.