Art, Cultural Heritage, Folk Life and Folk Art

The fields of activity of the Art, Cultural Heritage and Folk Culture Unit can be broken down to the following tasks.

Funding
The Cultural Department of the State of Styria provides funding for the design, development, production and implementation of a wide variety of cultural and artistic projects. These initiatives should spark the interest of people and be accessible to the general public. A prerequisite in all of this is a concrete reference to Styria or to the Styrian artistic and cultural scene.

The areas that are eligible for financial support are defined in the Culture and Arts Promotion Act:

• Visual arts, new media and architectural design
• Performing Arts
• Film
• Literature
• Music, music theatre and sound art
• General folk culture, museums, monument preservation and cultural assets.

 More information in German language >>

Preservation of Cultural Heritage

A person's cultural heritage is the basis for a of society's cultural development, because society thrives on sustained protection of information and the resulting knowledge. Cultural heritage involves temporal constancy over generations and supports communication between people so that they become essential cultural reference points of communities.

In this context, the Cultural Department of the State of Styria cooperates with a large number of institutions that also seek to preserve and protect cultural heritage and Styrian folk culture, such as the Austrian Commission for UNESCO, the Austrian Federal Monuments Office, the Museumsforum Steiermark, Volkskultur GmbH as well as folk cultural associations, brass bands and choirs.

In addition to protecting cultural objects (e.g. monument protection), its tasks also include the preservation of areas worthy of cultural protection, such as the historic city centre of Graz, protected local heritage sites and the three UNESCO World Heritage sites in Styria.

 More information in German language >>

Digital Atlas

Together with Department 17 - Geo Information Service, a digital atlas for art and culture is being developed. In this atlas, art and cultural institutions as well as objects and areas worthy of cultural protection will be recorded in a  digital map and made accessible to the public.