Kultur im Jetzt / Vorarlberg

(c) Sarah Mistura

Small country, big horizon“, one could say, when looking at Vorarlberg. 

The populist narrative of this corona crises is beeing told from the perspective of a narrowminded mindset. Closing not only borders. In Vorarlberg, stake holders from culture and tourism have joint forces, to change perspectives. They formed the platform „culture in present“ and used the crisis efficiently to further develop the already well-established cooperation between culture and tourism in Vorarlberg with a leap forward. 

The common interests of culture and tourism have become more visible in the Corona crisis than ever before: Both live from cosmopolitanism, mobility and the widening of ones own horizons. And both have been hit harder by the Corona crisis than almost any other area. 

Instead of being satisfied with merely saving what can be saved, Vorarlberg has started a broadly based network process that efficiently and with simple means tackles several challenges and goals at the same time. 

In order to relieve cultural organisers and tourism enterprises of the burden of having to clarify the legal and organisational framework for promoting cultural events during the pandemic on their own, the platform www.kulturimjetzt.at offers all the necessary information, including complete toolkits and event format proposals, for cultural events under „Corona conditions“. Anyone who wants to start a project in cooperation with „Kul- tur im Jetzt“ can easily apply for a small grant, which will then be paid by the respective munici- pality. 

Cultural organisers and tourism enterprises with their event locations are directly linked to each other via a joint online contact exchange. Within just a few weeks, 140 projects, some of them with completely new cultural event formats, have been created. But more importantly: „In the municipalities and tourism enterprises themselves, the direct cooperation between culture and tourism has achieved a completely new level of quality. The visibility of the cultural programmes has also increased significantly,“ says Christian Schützinger, the managing director of Vorarlberg Tourism. „I also expect this to provide valuable impulses for the time after the crisis.

In Vorarlberg in particular, there is great potential to reach out across the borders with cultural event formats that are developed on the special bases of our local conditions and the quality of proximity. There has always been an open cultural exchange in the Lake Constance region. Corona will not change this – on the contrary,“ Schützinger is convinced. The more than 120 programme projects on the www.kulturimjetzt.at platform so far seem to prove him right. 


Kultur im Jetzt
www.kulturimjetzt.at