Initiative Minderheiten Tirol

Culture. Dialogue. Multiplicity.

The non-profit association Initiative Minderheiten was founded in 1991 and is a non-governmental and non-profit organization with offices in Vienna and Innsbruck. The initiative develops and realizes socio-political as well as cultural projects and sees itself as a platform, network and mediator for minorities in Austria. Thus, the Initiative Minderheiten acts at the interface of cultural work and political education.

The office in Innsbruck, Initiative Minderheiten Tirol, sets city- and region-specific impulses with innovative and high-quality cultural work and is committed to a cultural transfer between minorities and majorities. The association’s concept of minorities is broad and is not defined by quantity, but by forms of exclusion from social participation. Thus, in addition to traditional Tyrolean minorities such as the Yenish, migrants and refugees, the association’s target groups also include beggars.

The implementation of the goals in Tyrol is mainly carried out through events and actions that make the artistic-creative work of members of different minorities visible and in the course of this also sensitize the public to existing power and inequality relationships. Another essential field of activity is lobbying and networking as well as acting as a contact point for different minority groups.

The projects or events of the Initiative Minderheiten Tirol are at best initiated by minority groups, activists or artists. The role of the Initiative Minderheiten Tirol is to provide content-related and structural support in conception, organization and implementation as well as the provision of resources and knowledge. Again and again, however, the Initiative Minderheiten Tirol also sets content-related impulses itself, whereby the participation of affected activists and artists is sought as a basic prerequisite for the realization of a project.