departure
departure - business promotion in Vienna
departure, the City of Vienna’s agency for the creative industries, was established in 2003 as Austria’s first independent business promotion agency and service center for companies of the creative industries. Today it is considered a successful example of innovation funding on a competitive basis in Europe. departure is a subsidiary company of the Vienna Business Agency and part of the department for economic affairs of the City of Vienna. departure funding does not replace any cultural funding or subsidies; and it does not at all shorten the cultural budget of the City of Vienna.
departure addresses those creative professionals who consider themselves active participants in business life. With the aim to create an economically sustainable basis for Vienna’s creative professionals departure offers various funding programs for entrepreneurs and company founders and supports outstanding achievements in the following fields of the creative industries: fashion, music, audio-vision, multimedia, design, publishing, art market and architecture.
departure does not offer funding for purely artistically oriented projects but supports the integration of cultural and creative achievements into the city’s economy in the sense of economic exploitation of innovative and creative work (and not in the sense of mere profit seeking).
Besides departure’s funding activities there is a strong focus on network activities to improve the infrastructure of the different creative scenes. Initiatives such as curated by_vienna, which coincides with the VIENNAFAIR, or events organized in the scope of the sound:frame festival, the festival for fashion & photography, the VIENNA ART WEEK or the VIENNA DESIGN WEEK are meant to strengthen Vienna’s position as a location for the creative industries.