United Nations & Whoosh Collaborations

We live in an age of multiple crises. And so the work of multinational, expert groups like the United Nations becomes even more important. These are the people saving the world, developing ambitious goals, campaigns, and on-the-ground programmes to provide food, peace, education and wise advice in tense situations.

We at Whoosh are proud to have been invited several times to offer ideas and events to open up new dialogue in and with the UN here in Vienna - and beyond.

It started with an invitation from the Academy of Sustainable Urban Mobility (based in Nairobi) to make a presentation and walk to 28 visitors from the global south, while they visited WU in Wien.

Then we started, initially through Britta Hörnchen in the Geography Department, to make tours for Vienna International School, which have continued now for six years, on themes including Smartness, Liveability & Overtourism.

In 2019, Eugene was invited by Kayyum Majgawkar, at IAEA, to make a public TED Talk inside Vienna International Centre, on the topic of Rebellious Optimism

There is a Gender research group at the UN in Vienna, and they contacted us in November 2024, wanting to have a presentation from us about our Feminism for Men tour, and how it can be reproduced in other cities, particularly as part of the education system.

Stadt Wien wants to build more bridges between the city and the UN, and they asked us to adapt our social dining event, Coffeehouse Conversations, with a question menu to reflect the Sustainable Development Goals, but also more personal themes, and we curated two evenings, in March 2020 and March 2024, to sit down Stadt Wien employees and UN diplomats, one-to-one, with good food and wine in Cafe Rathaus. There will be more, since more than 100 UN employees applied for the 17 available places. Eugene decided who sat with whom!

We were happy to contribute to the UNHCR Tag der Flucht, a very successful, innovative project unique to Vienna, from 2017-2023, with Wien Unbekannt, focusing on the refugee experience. We were specially pleased to extract some of the FPÖ Simmering culture budget, in those ugly years when 1110 was run by our blue party, and we could persuade them to finance our walk, named unknown Vienna, which in fact led us from the tragic Jewish cemetery at Zentralfriedhof, to FC Karabakh, a rebel left-wing migrant footie club, and on to the glorious Autumn Fest of Macondo, Europe's oldest refugee camp, originally created as a garden community by fleeing Hungarians, but then followed by Chileans, Ethiopians, Bosnians, Chechens and now Afghans. It is a special, unexplored part of east Wien - and highly recommended. From 2022, we changed course, and showed the arriving Ukrainian refugees how Vienna works (thanks to Yulia Belinskaya for translating the ideas, with flair and top spin).

Eugene Quinn was invited in 2018 to present to teachers at Vienna International School about the benefits of walking for creative learning. That is perhaps the central message of Vienna, and this group was one of the first to recognise our potential.

And finally, in October 2025, Eugene will actively participate in the UN-Habitat-financed MARUF congress in Istanbul, Turkey, and since this is sponsored by <un, it is free to participate. Whoosh will be moderating events, as well as making presentations, social-dining, unusual tours, DJ concepts and media engagement. See you there!