Pascal Okafor comes from Nigeria and lives in Graz as a Refugee. In this city he especially appreciates the feeling of security. The security of leaving the house at any time of day and to be able to go wherever you want. Pascal Okafor works as a megaphone salesman and is a member of the Nigerian choir of the African Catholic Community. The community celebrates the Holy Mass in English in the St. Andrä Church Graz. Together with his friends he sings and plays in the languages Igbo and English. His instrument of choice is Alo, a traditional Nigerian instrument.

Susana Sawoff is a musician, singer and pianist. Born in Graz, she has lived in Hamburg for 10 years. She always likes to come back to her hometown – not least to rehearse with her duo partner of the jazz-pop group Exit Universe in the basement vaults of the Freiheitsplatz.

„I am culturally diverse, but Graz embraces this diversity, Graz embraces music and Graz ebmbraces creativity.“says KingYi Foong, pianist and business economist. Originating from China she was born in Malaysia and grew up in Australia. When she turned 20 she already lived on three continents thereby music has always been her constant companion.

The Hungarian writer and performance artist Kinga Toth spends one year as a “city writer” in Graz. On behalf of the Graz Department of Culture’s invitation, she lives in the Cerrini Schlössl on the Schlossberg, a few metres below the clock tower. There she develops her literary and artistic projects. Kinga Toth not only deals with the written, but also with the phonetic and visual text forms and mixes and combines Hungarian with German and English in her works.

Marina Schmied comes from France and works as a ballet dancer in the Graz Opera. During the week, she rehearses there for several hours a day for upcoming performances. In her work, it is important to her that she has fun and that she can express herself and her feelings in dance.

Aglaée Degros is head and professor at the institute of Urbanism at TU Graz. She designed numerous public spaces in the Netherlands and her native Belgium. She pays special attention to designing the squares so that they can be actively used and adapted by the people – as an extended living room, so to speak.

Eva Rossmann is a writer from Graz who focuses on detective stories. Today she lives in the Weinviertel region of Lower Austria, but likes to go to Sardinia for research and writing. After her career as a lawyer and journalist, she began writing non-fiction books before dedicating herself entirely to the crime genre. Meanwhile, the author has published 20 crime novels, with which she always wants to tell a small piece of our world. Her current crime novel “Im Netz” deals with everything that has to do with information, manipulation and crime on the net.

Ekaterina Degot is the director of the avant-garde festival steirischer herbst. She comes from Moscow and is an art historian. For Ekaterina Degot the dialogue with the cultural context in which an art festival takes place is important because a festival does not happen nowhere but in a precise place and at a precise moment in time. The question of why exactly these works of art are brought to Graz or will be produced in Graz has to be answered. It is no coincidence that the steirischer herbst of 2018 focused on places having witnessed historical events, such as Schlossbergstiege, Keplerstrasse as the street Hitler drove along in 1938 and the Hotel Daniel. For Ekaterina Degot Hotel Daniel represents the expectations and hopes of the post-war period.

Xaõ Seffcheque was a musician, screenwriter and filmmaker. He started his musical career in the 1970s in Graz before he moved to the punk scene in Düsseldorf. Seffcheque's last home was Cologne. A part of his history can be found in the exhibition Pop 1900 – 2000 in the Museum of History. “Graz certainly had an importance in 20th century popular music for a while,” said Seffcheque. “I always have a comforting nostalgia when I’m in this city, so I like to come back.” His film “Die Kleinen und die Bösen” (“The Little and the Bad”) recently had its Austrian premiere at the Forum Stadtpark, a Graz-based art institution of which Seffcheque remained a member since his youth.

Sara Saria has lived in Graz for five years. Since March 2018, she has been operating the “Gewürze der Welt” business on Lendplatz, where in addition to selected pure spices from all over the world, there are nuts, dried fruits and in-house spice blends. The native Syrian learned the craft from her father. For her Lendplatz is a good place for her business, especially with the lively farmer’s market, which takes place regularly opposite.

“From an artistic point of view, Graz is a very progressive and cosmopolitan city,” says Liviu Bulea. He is a visual artist from Turda, Romania. In 2018, Liviu Bulea received a scholarship in Graz through the program of the Styrian Provincial Government of Styria-Artist-in-Residence (St.A.i.R.), where he is working on a project on the concept of home, from the point of view of refugees and immigrants.

Matta Wagnest is an artist who has her starting point in Graz. Wagnest works interdisciplinarily with almost all materials and her work is represented worldwide. Her artistic work includes painting, graphics, object, installation and performance. In addition to numerous international exhibitions, including the Architecture Biennale in Venice and the Istanbul Biennale, she has repeatedly collaborated with Styrian art and cultural institutions such as steirischer herbst, Grazer Kunstverein and Forum Stadtpark. “Significant changes in my work have always taken place in Graz,” says Matta Wagnest. A central element of her work is love, for which she has created her own term “Attam”. “Access to life is also access to love,” says Wagnest.

Alexey Kovalets is studying at Tomsk State University in Russia. He spends his Erasmus semester at the Karl-Franzens-Universität, the University of Graz. His subjects are Russian and English, a combination of which he benefits, as he can compare the teaching methods of these two languages. In addition to studying, he works as a teaching assistant and gathers experience in teaching Russian Language students.
In Tomsk, Alexey Kovalets never goes by bicycle. Be it because of the weather in Siberia, or because of the distances. In Graz, however, one of his first activities was to buy one. Because from the Friedrich Schiller dormitory where he lives he can reach every point in Graz in less than twenty minutes by bike.

Dietmar Feichtinger is an architect, lives in Paris and is internationally successful with his office Feichtinger Architectes. After studying architecture in Graz, he worked for renowned architects from Graz such as Eilfried Huth, Volker Giencke and Klaus Kada, before his path led him to Paris, where he has lived and worked for the past 30 years.
“As for my architecture, Graz has been extremely defining and significantly important,” says Feichtinger. For him, the “Graz School of Architecture” reflects the enthusiasm for architecture and what can be communicated with it, whether in an artistic or social approach. His most recent project in Styria expresses the values that he believes architecture should support: Three interconnected schools offer the opportunity for development and learning with and from each other.

Dietmar Feichtinger teaches at the University Paris VI – La Villette, among others. He is known for works such as the Simone de Beauvoir pedestrian bridge in Paris, the Danube University Krems or the Kunsthaus Weiz and has received many awards.