Rising Voices Documentary Screening
The Austrian Press & Information Service and the Bertelsmann Foundation presented a screening of the short documentary Rising Voices. The film explores how young people in Vienna, Austria participate in local politics. How do children and young people in Vienna learn about and experience democracy? How does the city learn about what young people want? Rising Voices features innovative initiatives like the Participatory Children, Youth Million, and the Children and Youth Parliament, and hears from a variety of perspectives, including the vice mayor of Vienna and city council members, as well as teachers and students.
The film was created by the Washington, DC-based Bertelsmann Foundation and the German Marshall Fund of the United States in cooperation with WIENXTRA and the City of Vienna. It is part of a six-part documentary series featuring democratic innovations in cities on both sides of the Atlantic. The other cities highlighted in this project include Oklahoma City (Oklahoma), Athens (Greece), Minneapolis (Minnesota), Barcelona (Spain), and Lexington (Kentucky).
The screening was followed by a panel discussion entitled Generation Vote: Shaping Democracy Through Youth Participation with Kirsten Eddy from the Pew Research Center and Tarsi Dunlop from the German Marshall Fund of the United States, moderated by Anthony Silberfeld from the Bertelsmann Foundation. The event concluded with a wine reception.
