Composing Futures – Creative Impact on Eco-Social Transformation
Call for Contributions
Forum & Co-Creation Labs
6 & 7 November 2026
mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
in the framework of Wien Modern
How can contemporary, improvised, and experimental music actively contribute to eco-social transformation?
How can we move beyond critique toward collective experimentation with fairer, more sustainable forms of cooperation, coordination, audience engagement, and resilient cultural infrastructures?
The forum Composing Futures: Creative Impact on Eco-Social Transformation invites practitioners and thinkers from contemporary, improvised, and experimental music, as well as related interdisciplinary practices, to collectively explore how artistic work can respond to and reshape intertwined ecological and social crises.
Rather than approaching sustainability as an administrative or policy requirement, we understand it as an artistic, social, and structural question—one that concerns not only ecological responsibility but also working conditions, institutional structures, and modes of collaboration.
Art can function as a catalyst—revealing, reframing, and reimagining the multiple dimensions of eco-social crisis. Engaged artistic practices not only address environmental degradation; they can also reinvent the political field through experimentation with solidaristic, cooperative, and pluriversal forms of working, organizing, and living.
Across Europe—and particularly within Austria’s contemporary music sector—artists and cultural practitioners face increasing precarity, shrinking resources, fragmented infrastructures, and rising expectations regarding sustainability, cooperation, coordination, and audience development. At the same time, new counter-movements are emerging: collective working models, degrowth-oriented imaginaries, community-based resilience, and horizontal knowledge exchange.
This forum is conceived as an interactive platform. It combines critical inputs with dialogues, participatory workshops, practice-based sessions, and co-creative labs.
Instead of one-way presentations, we aim to create shared spaces for:
- dialogue and critical discussion
- collective reflection on sectoral challenges
- experimentation with fairer and more sustainable cooperation models
- prototyping of concrete initiatives and coordination strategies
- peer learning across artistic and institutional contexts
The goal is not only to discuss eco-social transformation but to rehearse and prototype it together.
Relevant topics may include:
- Artistic responses to the eco-social crisis in contemporary, improvised, and experimental music
- Environmental justice in artistic contexts
- Degrowth and post-productivist models in the arts
- Solidarity-based artistic practices and collective infrastructures
- Fair collaboration models and tools to foster resilient cultural ecosystems
- Strategies for stronger cooperation across ensembles, festivals, institutions, and independent actors
- Sustainable audience development and meaningful community engagement
We are particularly interested in practices that demonstrate:
- Community-based and commons-oriented approaches in contemporary, improvised, or experimental music
- Horizontal and cooperative working models among composers, performers, ensembles, and cultural actors
- Sustainable and low-impact production strategies in music projects
- Artistic responses to environmental injustice and eco-social crisis through sound and music
- Small-scale, resilient, locally rooted musical initiatives
Submission Guidelines
Please submit your proposal via the online application form: https://secure.dialog-mail.de/pf/510/QFEOv↗↗
The form will ask for:
- Indication of preferred format
- Short bio
- Proposal (max. 500 words)
- Technical requirements (if applicable)
Submission deadline: 18 May 2026
Notification: 30 June 2026
Language: English
In case of any questions, please contact office@ignm.at
more information: