DoReMi is the music school of The Open Music Project and Vienna’s first social music school. Our mission is to make high-quality music education accessible to everyone. Too often, music lessons are unaffordable or out of reach due to financial or social barriers. We believe that access to music education should never be a privilege.

Our story began in 2016 with the first Open Piano events in Vienna. Publicly accessible grand pianos transformed public spaces into places of encounter, bringing together people from all walks of life and demonstrating the unique power of music to connect. Donations collected through these events initially funded free piano lessons for refugees. The strong demand and overwhelmingly positive response soon revealed a clear gap in Vienna’s music education landscape: there was no long-term, socially oriented music school that made high-quality music education truly accessible.

In 2018, we founded DoReMi: Vienna’s first social music school.

Today, more than 200 students learn music together at DoReMi each semester. Our intercultural paired-learning model brings people together from diverse cultural, social, and economic backgrounds, creating meaningful connections that extend far beyond the classroom. Friendships are formed, language skills improve, and mutual understanding grows. At the same time, our Pay-What-You-Can-model ensures that financial circumstances are not a barrier to learning music.

To this day, our Open Piano events and DoReMi complement one another. While the Open Pianos make music visible, accessible, and welcoming in public spaces, many of our students gain their first performance experience there and become part of a vibrant musical community. The donations collected through these events are reinvested directly into DoReMi, enabling even more people to access affordable, high-quality music education.

Music education creates opportunities. Yet access to it is still largely determined by financial means and social background. Through DoReMi, we are closing this gap by creating a place where high-quality music education, social inclusion, and cultural diversity come together.

Our intercultural paired-learning model brings together people of different generations, cultures, and life experiences. At the same time, our Pay-What-You-Can-model keeps lessons affordable while fostering solidarity: those who are able to contribute more help make music education accessible to others.

The impact of our approach is reflected in our social impact evaluation. Three out of four students say they would not have started or returned to music lessons without DoReMi. Many build new social connections and meet people outside their usual social circles. As a result, our students develop not only musical skills, but also confidence, a sense of belonging, and new perspectives.

With every lesson, every concert, and every new connection, we contribute to a more open and inclusive society in which participation in cultural life is not determined by financial circumstances.

We envision a future in which high-quality music education is accessible to everyone, regardless of their financial, social, or cultural background.

A future where music schools are places of lived diversity, where people learn from one another, build lasting friendships, and experience the power of music to bring communities together. A future in which cultural participation is a given, and everyone has the opportunity to discover and develop their own musical voice.

To make this vision a reality, we continuously develop DoReMi while ensuring the long-term sustainability of our work alongside our Open Piano projects. Through strong partnerships and sustainable funding, we aim to expand access to high-quality music education and make a lasting contribution to equal opportunities, social inclusion, and community cohesion.

We believe that music has the power to build bridges, create opportunities, and connect people. When cultural participation is accessible to everyone, society as a whole benefits.