mdw student Anna Buchegger took advantage of the COVID standstill to participate in the ORF casting show Starmania. And even after winning it with her own song Ease, the young singer remained true to her ideals: she immediately founded her own label and both produced and released her winning song on her own.

Numerous factors—be they social, economic, or of some other nature—play significant roles in how we’ve been dealing with the situation that has faced us since March 2020. One of these significant factors is what we call “resilience”.

How the conductor, mdw professor, and musicologist Johannes Wildner is making active and reflective use of the pandemic, and why he views this crisis as an opportunity.

When studying abroad, students typically meet lots of new people from all over the world, explore their host institutions, get to know the cultural life of a new city, go on outings, go to parties … in short: they gather new and memorable impressions and experiences. Despite the pandemic, last year at the mdw featured lots of student mobility.

Therapists Marion Herbert, Evelyn Jahn, and Alexander Parte provide insights into their work, point out the themes that dominated the COVID crisis, and reveal what can help us (better) deal with such situations.

This successful singer and actor has been studying Cultural Management at the Department of Cultural Management and Gender Studies (IKM) since 2019. During the COVID-19 crisis, he employed his newly acquired knowledge in order to independently produce a solo CD as well as an online concert.

One’s strength and flexibility can be trained and developed, superiors can lead in a way that builds resilience, and organisations themselves need to be culturally and structurally stable and agile in order to deal with present and future challenges.