Founding idea and “East meets West”

The Waves Festival & Conference will take place for the 12th time in 2022. It sees itself as a festival of discovery and aims to bring exciting musicians and their works from all over the world to the city.

The initial founding idea of the festival was to create a platform or structure under the motto “East meets West”, through which initiatives of the music scene from Eastern and Western Europe can exchange ideas.

In Vienna, in the heart of Europe, Waves Vienna positioned itself in 2011 as a networking hub for the music scenes and has been working continuously on building bridges between East and West ever since. The basis for a successful cooperation, in which discussions take place, the respective state of knowledge is examined in workshops and, last but not least, horizons are broadened, has been laid; the establishment of a sustainable future perspective is the goal.

New focus for Festival & Conference

In addition to the orientation as a hub between Eastern and Western Europe, which is deeply inscribed in the DNA of Waves, the festival will also deal with socio-political topics and problems from 2022. Every year, individual aspects or areas from the comprehensive field of diversity, the conscious handling of diversity in society at all levels, will serve as a thematic focus within the festival and the conference. This year we want to deal with Micro Activism as part of the general theme of Diversity.

Diversity

We understand diversity as an organisational and socio-political concept that propagates an appreciative, conscious and respectful approach to diversity and individuality.

With our focus, we want to contribute to the reduction of discrimination and the promotion of equal opportunities and represent the diversity of people, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, social background, appearance or sexual orientation, both in the festival and at the conference.

We want to try to recognise people’s diverse achievements and experiences and to understand and use them as potential.

In order to be able to comprehend and depict the extensive field of diversity on as many levels as possible, we want to dedicate ourselves to a sub-theme each year that communicates with the overall theme.