This week in Vienna sees a series of events to co-inside with autumn season. There is the Jewish Festival: Yiddishkeit, that is advertised on the Ubahn with a gigantic picture of Ariel Muzicant, president of the Viennese Jewish community and the Europafreunde festival at the Ministry of Foreign affairs, Fashion and smiling faces are welcome curious visitors to the show.

I am all for this kind of marketing, but I know others are not as agreeable I am on this matter. The very fact that the Yiddishkeit’s program has artists, who are diverse and are not necessarily Jewish, having filiation and not affiliation, is not immediately apparent. Similarly, Europafreunde’s diverse mixture of musicians from the Balkans that could be heard across the forecourt of the Foreign Ministry rang deeper than the fun and trendy poster images.

We have a similar mission I see, politicians and cultural producers. To find an access point for a general mass of people, that may not yet be quite a critical mass. This is sensitive work, as it requires sometimes working with already deeply ingrained stereotypes that can be useful. They provide a point of reference and an access point; the most important thing is to then go deeper.

Take the image of the president of the Jewish community, all dressed up in traditional ceremonial attire as the eye catcher for the passer by. The programme then provides something alternative: Israeli music with diverse influence from Ethiopia. I have into these discussions often with artists from other countries living in Austria.

Most of the time, my opinions on this are taken, I am sure, in the wrong way. Over drinks with a Chinese artist, I got into a discussion about how the tag of migrant artists was detrimental and caused ghetto like clusters. My solution, I proposed was to offer these salient markers of recognition for the curious public to access and then go deeper, once you have their attention. This is where the element of surprise comes in, but the people are already engaged, often through an emotive connection. OS the connection is already strong and it at that points those perceptions can be changed.

I was confronted with anger-why should artists have to prostitute themselves and package in sticky sweet wrapping in order to be understood. I agree that this alone is detrimental, however, since so much of this sticky sweet superficial entertainment is so pervasive (Paris Hilton comes to mind) surely, we have to navigate within this environment in order to navigate our way out of it.

We are already in the labyrinth; it is up to us to work within it, to find our way out. As I speak I am reminded of a party I was invited to in Leeds, England-once a predominantly white middle class town, is now quite full of many cultures. A older friend, who enjoys a spot of golf and walking in the dales and belonging to this ‘once’ Leeds town is usually against anything ‘wacky’ which usually means anything ‘other’ to his own ethnicity, class, preferences and perceptions. However, his local Leeds country club that sells the best local beer on tap was having an open house. To my surprise I enter what seems like a family gathering of a large Turkish family and there I see, this older friend of mine, who regularly comments on the hassle of having to ‘bend-over-backwards’ for the influx of immigrants to his home town, enjoying a spot of dancing Turkish style and couple of baklava with his local brew.

Culture once again finds common ground through joy and laughter, family festivities, dance and music all neatly packaged in the country local where one can still purchase a good old Leeds brew on tap.