KulturKontakt Austria (KKA) is one of the largest Austrian centres of competence for cultural education, arts & cultural education, cultural dialogue and educational cooperation with Eastern and South East Europe. It is a non-profit making organisation and has three programme departments: arts & cultural education, educational cooperation and cultural promotion & sponsoring.

In the department of “arts & cultural education”, KKA supports professional cultural education in the schools sector and other fields in Austria. With the support of KKA, every year over 90.000 young people receive the opportunity to take part in arts education projects in their school. Arts education projects with apprentices are also a significant area of work, as is the development of new arts education projects in the social field.

In the area of cultural promotion & sponsoring, KKA supports cultural dialogue projects in all categories of the arts in Eastern Europe and Austria. Activities range from individual grants and start-up grants for innovate initiatives via cooperation with event organisers to the participation in infrastructure programmes. Since 1990, KKA has helped to realise more than 4.000 projects and has carried out numerous projects itself. In the meantime, KKA can point to a variety of contacts in 22 countries in Central, Eastern and South East Europe.

On behalf of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, Austrian educational coordinators in nine k.education Project Offices in Central, Eastern and South East Europe develop educational projects – together with KKA – with their partners in these countries. KKA thus makes an important contribution to educational reform and to the European integration of these countries.

With the coordination office AUNO, KKA has supported the scientific exchange between Austrian universities and other educational institutions with Asian partner institutions and the network coordination since January 2005.

Source: Organisation's website, October 27, 2008.