We are convinced that arts and culture are crucial for coping with a rapidly changing world. They contribute to renegotiating social values, can transform fears into understanding, and promote a shared awareness in the face of social, political, economic, technological, and ecological challenges.

Culture encompasses everything created or shaped by people: from the way we live together, create meaning and perceive social developments, to specific cultural practices such as art and science. Culture provides the context in which communities form and evolve. Within this context, art makes reality tangible to the senses, poses questions and opens up new perspectives. Together, they reveal how we can understand and shape the world.

This underpins our commitment to resilient and diverse art and culture in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, which is both locally rooted and internationally impactful. In collaboration with partners, we initiate, support and shape projects that put this approach into practice: Kontakt is a unique collection dedicated to the preservation and promotion of neo-avantgarde art from the 1960s onwards which had previously received little attention. Kontakt operates as a nomadic collection, currently comprising over 1,400 works by around 180 artists. tranzit.org is a transnational network of arts and cultural organisations with over twenty years of collaboration in Austria, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. It sees itself as a cultural infrastructure, an open space for imagination, theory and practice. The Igor Zabel Award is one of the most prestigious cultural awards in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, named after the influential Slovenian art historian and curator Igor Zabel (1958–2005). It honours outstanding contributions to art history, curation and theory, as well as the significance of art for the examination of social developments.

In addition, projects are developed on pressing social issues such as demographic change, labour migration and democracy in rural areas. We also support cultural education initiatives, publications, translations and discursive formats. These open up avenues for social exchange, solidarity and a shared engagement with questions about the future.

Photo: Jonáš Verešpej