Since 2006, the series Into the City, which takes places within the context of the music programme of Wiener Festwochen, has aimed at creating contact interfaces with the city of Vienna and its inhabitants.
Venues for joint projects involving local residents are municipal housing projects, urban centres and public space. Into the City links a great variety of artistic disciplines to connect with social and societal issues of direct concern for the city.

One focus in the 5^th year since the introduction of Into the City is dedicated to current forms of artistic expression and issues of interest to young people. For this purpose, Into the City has set up the project Street Academy. 10 different workshops offer young denizens of Vienna the possibility of learning “cool” skills that range from hip hop, breakdance, DJing or trial biking to poetry, slam poetry and video podcasting. An “interim report” of Street Academy will be provided by the staged demonstration “That’s My Thing!” in the suburban square Urban Loritz-Platz, a popular place of encounter for Vienna’s youth.

For about one year, the municipal housing development Am Schöpfwerk has been the nexus of the successful project City of Music, which offers music-on-demand for the 5,000 development residents. In the context of Wiener Festwochen 2010, the Vienna Boys’ Choir will inter alia explore Egyptian, Turkish and Austrian songs with the different ethnic groups living at Am Schöpfwerk and sing these sings together with the local residents.

A sing-along of pop songs from former Yugoslavia will kick off the opening event of Soho in Ottakring, another successful co-operation venture of Into the City.

Within the scope of the exhibition In the Garden of Eden, 9 international artists will address stories and biographies of the people working at Naschmarkt. The Naschmarkt exhibition will be inaugurated with a “long night” of concerts.

The looming “repatriation” of its participants will set the transmedial game Threshold Country by Berlin director Lukas Matthaei in motion. For 10 days, he will put participants in the shoes of refugees and in this way will communicate strategies on how to survive in the back-alleys of everyday urban life.