What do you do with a bunch of art? No matter if fine art, music or literature, it always needs a stage, a platform, a place where she can be seen. This is where cultural management begins, at least for me. Young, naive and fresh from high school I decided to spend a year at Kultur Aktiv to find out how art and culture can get this space.I was already aware that the outside world only gets to see a small part of each project and that there is a preparation and follow-up to each project, but how small this part is surprised me after all. The following applies: After the project is before the project, because how about a follow-up project
So I quickly found myself in a place where people had to keep track of piles of notes, Excel spreadsheets and much more. A place where many applications are written to finance projects. It is important to finding the right tone or, as it is so beautifully called in Kultur Aktiv, you have to be a good application poet.
Of course, I did not write applications, but took on smaller tasks. To feed the website with contributions, helping with office organisation and take care of new European volunteers were regular tasks for me. I was not only able to gain some knowledge but also to learn a lot of practical things. The German bureaucracy has its own kind of application poetry and so even I, as a native speaker, became suspicious of some documents of my international fellow volunteers. In general I frequently had contact with people from different countries and was not only able to train my English but also get to know other cultures. In addition, I have also been involved with the gallery nEUROPA. Together with curator Holger Wendland I installed photo exhibitions and cared for guests at the vernissages. Another challenge for me was to take on the responsibility for the “Winter Travel” project. An annual presentation series at the beginning of the year in which people talk about their last travel adventures.
Finally, I can say that this year I not only cooked coffee (never actually), but was allowed to try and learn many things.