What is Pop-Kultur?

Pop-Kultur is an international festival hosted by Musicboard Berlin GmbH. It will be taking place for the seventh time in 2021 between the 25th and the 28th of August in a hybrid format. After previous editions in Berghain, throughout Neukölln and an excursion into the digital realm in 2020 due to the pandemic, the 2021 programme will mainly be held at the Kulturbrauerei in Prenzlauer Berg. Pop-Kultur rests on four pillars: Live (Concerts, Talks & Films and Commissioned Works), Nachwuchs, Netzwerk and Lokal.

Live & Commissioned Works

Numerous concerts, exhibitions, installations, talks and films form the heart of Pop-Kultur. The festival emphasises internationality and the biggest possible diversity of perspectives represented in the programme, offering pop culture a discursive space in which they get reflected, contextualised and celebrated. We stand for interdisciplinary exchange, including academic discourse.

As an extension of the Live programme, Pop-Kultur enables local and international artists to create and present new Commissioned Works. In addition to  that, external and international artists will present their Digital Works on the Pop-Kultur website.

Furthermore, Pop-Kultur is committed to deepening international cultural exchange. Besides co-productions with other international festivals and partners and increasing cooperation with musicians from Eastern Europe and the African continent, a residency between Tel Aviv and Berlin aims to strengthen collaborative work between German and Israeli artists.

Nachwuchs

For the Nachwuchs programme, Pop-Kultur welcomes 250 young talents from Berlin and around the world to around 40 workshops and networking opportunities with artists from the Live programme along with bright minds from business, politics and the music industry. The primary aim is the professionalisation of newcomers in the fields of music practice, music business, club and festival culture as well as interdisciplinary fields. In the long run, this will lead to an international network of creative people who bring progress to pop culture.

In cooperation with the Goethe-Institut, the Pop-Kultur festival has enabled ten young musical talents from the Global South, the Middle East and Asia to take part in Pop-Kultur Live and Pop-Kultur Nachwuchs since 2015.

One alum of Goethe-Talents gets the opportunity to return to Berlin the following year for a four-week Goethe Residency to develop a collaborative project with a Berlin-based artist and present it in the festival’s main Live programme.

Netzwerk

The Netzwerk get-together is seen as a variable space in which the German capital’s professional music and cultural scenes can share ideas with other national and international artists from the music and creative industries, young pop-culture talents and other decision-makers within politics and business. International players in the music and creative industries are given insights into international developments in pop music and into Berlin and Germany as production sites for pop culture.

Lokal

Although Pop-Kultur is international in scope, it by no means neglects Berlin’s local scene, striving to put a spotlight on outstanding concepts. The Pop-Kultur Lokal programme has taken place every year since 2018, organised with Dominique Schweizer and the Off-Kultur project. Four events are selected by an independent jury, to be presented in the months that lead up to the main festival. Furthermore, Pop-Kultur Lokal also focuses on long-term exchange with the organisers: every year, one of the organisers from the previous year is invited to design and realise a separate part of Pop-Kultur’s main programme.

Information about awareness and accessibility at Pop-Kultur can be found here.