Kostenfreie Tanz- und Bewegungsworkshops im öffentlichen Raum.
Offen für alle. Ohne Anmeldung, ohne Vorkenntnisse.
Begegnung durch Bewegung ist ein Projekt des Civil Action Network (CAN). Von Mai bis September sind wir in Wiener Parks und auf Plätzen zu Gast. Erfahrene Bewegungspädagog*innen leiten zweistündige Workshops, zweimal pro Woche, über mehrere Wochen am selben Ort und zur selben Zeit. Wer vorbeikommt, macht mit. Keine Kosten, keine Anmeldung, keine tänzerische Erfahrung nötig.
Der Grundgedanke
Vienna is a densely populated city where people pass each other every day without ever getting to know one another. On the same park bench, in the same street, in the same stairwell. That’s big-city life, but it adds up. Where people don’t know each other, mistrust grows faster than trust, and public space turns into a backdrop you walk past, rather than somewhere you arrive at.
That’s where we come in. Movement needs no shared language, no prerequisites, no membership. It brings together people who would otherwise never meet, across generations, backgrounds, and ways of living. It creates a setting where a true sense of neighbourhood starts to emerge: greeting each other by name, a quick chat on the pavement, the feeling of not living among strangers.
The format
Every park has its routines. The bench where the same older gentleman reads his paper. The shortcut everyone takes without thinking. The corner where no one lingers. We set out to interrupt these routines for a few weeks: an open circle, music, people moving together. Sometimes there are ten of us, sometimes forty. Always people who wouldn’t find each other in any other setting.
The workshops draw on different movement and dance traditions. Cultural forms of expression are shared, tried out, passed on. Without a lecturing tone, without a stage. In between, people talk, laugh, and eat together. Dance, in our case, isn’t the occasion but the vehicle: what makes an encounter possible in the first place.
How a workshop is run
A movement educator guides the group through simple exercises anyone can follow. Alongside them, communicators are in the space. They talk to passers-by, draw curious people into the circle, and make sure no one at the edge feels left out. Joining in or just watching, both are fine. After each workshop, we take time to talk as a group and share a meal together.
Every season opens with a kick-off gathering and closes, where possible, with a final event. We cook, set up tables, and invite youth centres, seniors’ clubs, and other local institutions to join. These two gatherings build the framework for the season. People who come to the opening fest tend to come back and those who joined during the workshops find the closing event a perfect way to round off the season.
Who it’s for
Meeting Through Movement is open to anyone spending time in the public space, regardless of age, background, language, body, or social circumstance. You don’t need to speak German. You don’t need to know how to dance. Even if you only sit at the sideline and observe, have a chat, or stay for a shared meal, you’re part of it. The workshops draw attention. They create space for watching, talking, and laughing. And above all, for meeting each other.
We tailor each programme to the people actually living around the place we’re in. An afternoon in Margareten looks different from one in Hernals, because the neighbourhoods are different, the needs are different, the stories are different.
What changes
Dancing in a park once doesn’t change much. Dancing in the same park twice a week for multiple weeks changes quite a bit. The circle grows. People bring neighbours and acquaintances. You find out who lives across the street. The park becomes somewhere you want to linger, not just the fastest way from A to B.
And something stays with the district, too: new connections between neighbours, a place with fresh cultural energy, a neighbourhood that feels a little more like home. Public space becomes again what it should be: a place where community forms not because it’s been organised, but because people come together.
How it started
The project began in 2021 with a simple question: what happens if you bring movement, music, and a bit of hospitality into a public space? The first workshops were an experiment. And we can safely say: it worked.
In the years since, we’ve carried the format through several Viennese districts, learning something each time. How to approach a place before staging anything in it, which partnerships actually last, how long a season needs to be for relationships to form. Five years on, the experiment has become a format that holds its shape. The project has been supported, among others, by district cultural funding and the Ideenbudget of Grätzlmarie WieNeu+.
How we work
Before the first workshop starts, the work you don’t see happens. We carry out a local needs assessment, talk to people active in the area, and knock on doors in the surrounding buildings. Anyone who knows a place should have a say in shaping it.
On the ground, we team up with the people who hold the neighbourhood together. In past seasons, those partners have included the Nachbarschaftszentren Ottakring and Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus, klub ensemble, Jugendzentrum Alte Trafik at Volkertmarkt, and JUVIVO. Alongside them: Fairplay teams from mobile youth work, seniors’ clubs, studios, and district councils. Without these partnerships, the project wouldn’t exist in the form it does today.
We document each season in photo and video, collect voices from participants, and track who we’ve actually reached. That way we’re not working on gut feeling but refining the format with every edition.
Civil Action Network
Meeting Through Movement is a project by Civil Action Network (CAN), a non-profit organisation based in Vienna. Since 2020, we’ve been working to strengthen civil society in Austria – with formats that bring people together and invite them to speak up, take part, and get involved.
Collaborations
You work at a neighbourhood centre, a youth centre, a seniors’ club, a district council, or a cultural initiative, and you see a place nearby where Meeting Through Movement would make sense? Get in touch. New seasons take shape together with the people and institutions rooted in the neighbourhood – for us, that’s not optional, it’s the ground we build on.
Contact: bdb@civilaction.net
Current AND PAST events
SOME IMPRESSIONS FROM PREVIOUS YEARS
Diese Broschüre und Videos geben einen Einblick in die praktische Umsetzung des Projekts in den vergangenen Jahren:
E-Zine, Begegnung durch Bewegung
Trailer zum BdB Sommer 2022!
Das war BdB im Sommer 2022!
We went on air! Listen to us on Radio Orange, broadcasted on 16th of May 2025 and 6th of June 2025.
Fragen?
Want to join the team in 2026, receive regular updates, or support the project financially? Write to us at bdb@civilaction.net.
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