University of Applied Arts Vienna (Angewandte) is home to about 2,000 students, many of whom come from other European countries and from elsewhere abroad. As a leading centre of excellence in art, design and architecture, in teaching and research, “the Angewandte” has a strong international reputation. It provides societal impulses on various levels. It sees itself as a place of free artistic and academic expression, a forum for open debate and a laboratory for unfolding the potentials of artistic visions in today’s society and the societies of the future. The University offers a wide range of classical and exceptionally innovative study programs. By combining its own in-house expertise with relevant research partners in a transdisciplinary approach, “the Angewandte” contributes, in diverse project constellations, towards fulfilling innovative and sociopolitical goals.
The University of Pretoria (UP) is one of the largest contact and residential universities in South Africa, with its administration offices located in Hatfield Campus, Pretoria. This 111 year-old institution is also the largest producer of research in South Africa. Spread over seven campuses, it has nine faculties and a business school, the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS). It is the only university in the country that has a Faculty of Veterinary Science, and overall has 120 academic departments as well as 92 centres and institutes, accommodating more than 55000 students and offering about 1100 study programmes.The University of Pretoria also has an extensive community engagement programme.
The further partner institution is The Centre for the Less Good Idea, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. As an experimental art space it provides a unique opportunity for artists from across the disciplines as well as vast social, economic and racial divides in South Africa a safe space to collaboratively and collectively frame and develop new work and practices. As such it deliberately engages with its surrounds and local communities by opening itself up several times a year to host generative and multi-modal workshops through which ideas are precipitated into material form as performances and finally assert their autonomy as free-standing public events.