Spot on, girls!

Spot on, girls! Volume III

Note beforehand: With girls* and women* we mean cis-women, trans*women as well as non-binary people.

In the second year of Spot on, girls! we met a lot of great girls* and young women*, experienced a lot together and learned from each other. Now we are starting the third round full of girl* power! This year there will be hiphop and comic workshops: Kiezentdeckungstouren. We want to introduce ourselves to our favorite places, see which places girls* find rather stupid and discover new ones together. We want to see what offers, courses and events there are in the neighborhood and in the district. The whole thing will be accompanied by music. We'll put what we've seen into rap lyrics, record sounds from the city and mix them into a neighborhood beat.

During the fall and winter vacations there is a hip hop workshop week with great offers on breakdance, rap, djing and graffiti. We also plan trips together to places where girls* and women* have started their own projects and find out how they did it.

At the end of Spot on, girls! Volume III, there will be a future workshop in the spring, of course with the theme: Being a girl* in Berlin! We want to discuss the situation of girls* and young women* in Berlin with girls* and young women*, social workers*, local initiatives, politicians and many more. What is going well in the district? What is still needed? What do the girls* want? Who can help where? We are already looking forward to the results!

Thanks to the Berliner Projektfonds für kulturelle Bildung for funding the project!

Spot on, girls! Volume II - it goes on!

After our super nice first year with Spot on, girls! and the great closing party on April 8, 2017 at cassiopeia Berlin, we immediately started to think about how the new project in cooperation with Springstoff could continue. The girls* gave us some ideas and wishes: Another party, maybe in a different club, definitely more hip hop workshops, even more participants*, but most of all - workshops very often and not only during the vacations.

So we decided to offer different workshops every week for 3 months in four different girls' clubs in Berlin. Our four workshops are all about hip hop - breakdance, DJ, rap, graffiti - and new this time is also comic. Which workshop will take place where, we are still discussing with girls clubs and girls* who want to participate in the project.

What is already certain: Two workshops will run from September to December 2017, two from January to March 2018.We will start with impulse workshops in different institutions.

Because it was such a great success in the first project, we  will also bring back the Winter Holiday Hip Hop Week in February 2018, to which we will then invite all participants*.

And of course there will be a final party again, organized by the girls together, where the results from the workshops will be presented.

Many participants* will be back and are looking forward to finally getting started again in September - and we even more so!

Spot on, girls! Wow, what a year! We report ...

Summer 2016 - Participant acquisition

We started the project with several skateboard workshops in July 2016 for the emergency shelter at Ruschestraße in Lichtenberg, to make our project known there, to get to know girls from the emergency shelter and to advertise our activities during the summer vacations. Unfortunately we had to learn shortly before the beginning of the summer vacations that the international All Female Skateboard Contest SUCK MY TRUCKS, around which we had planned our summer skateboard week, had to be cancelled. However, this didn't really affect our vacation plans, as it gave us more time to focus on the individual days of the skatecamp.

Skateboard Summer Camp in July 2016

Already on the first day, girls from the NUK Ruschestraße, from the Mädchentreff Tivolotte, from the Mädchentreff Hella Klub in Hellersdorf and from the Mädchentreff Schilleria in Neukölln came. The most exciting thing for us was, of course, the girls' reactions when we first met them. While we were waiting with girls from Hellersdorf for the group from the emergency shelter, they were already asking us about the girls who had fled. The first thing they wanted to know was whether the girls were nice. They didn't ask about skin color, language, religion or headscarf, as they might have thought. No, they simply wanted to know if they were friendly. That was enough information for them about the expected participants. [The team of the Mellowpark was very helpful and provided us with more schooners and skateboards, because the generous equipment of cultures interactive was not enough for so many girls. We also offered fruit, snacks and drinks. On the second day we had planned a lot with the spot tour through Friedrichshain and Lichtenberg, met already at 12h at the skate hall on the RAW area and then unfortunately had to realize that two different times as start time within one week had not communicated well. A single participant came to the skate hall, all other participants joined us only at the usual time at 14h. So in the end we were with almost twenty girls from three different parts of the city at the skatepark at Nöldnerplatz and decided to stay there with the hot temperatures.

On Monday back at Mellowpark we had again over twenty participants and were briefly overwhelmed to keep track of all the girls in the large Mellowpark. The turnout was far greater than we had hoped for in our wildest dreams when planning.

Spraying one's name on a wall in one's own language was very well received as a way of getting to know each other. In this way, the names, some of which were unfamiliar on all sides, became more vivid and tangible. The Arabic-speaking girls began to write the  German names in Arabic script, which sparked bright enthusiasm among all.

Skateboarding workshops in August 2016

In August, we met again with girls from NUK Ruschestraße for a skate workshop in Lichtenberg to follow up on the week at Mellowpark and stay in touch with the girls. Some of the girls had turned out to be very skate enthusiastic and talented and were happy to be able to skate together with our trainer* again and to develop further.

Summer vacations 2016 - HipHop workshops in changing youth clubs & girls' meetings

In the second week of August we started with our HipHop workshops. The first workshop took place at InVia-Mädchentreff in Karlshorst. Due to the space there and the wishes of the girls who regularly visited the girls' meeting there, we started with a breakdance workshop. The next day we went to the Mädchentreff Tivolotte in Pankow with our hip hop workshop. Thursday we met the girls from the Schilleria and girls from the Hella-Klub together in the Hellersdorfer Hella-Klub for a rap workshop. It turned out to be very positive to be able to work here with an Arabic translation, because this way a small common rap text from three different languages could be created. Friday in the Statthaus Böcklerpark the workshop went like a dream. Through street art images with Arabic street art and hijab-wearing women's stencils (spray stencils) a conversation arose with all participants (with and without refugee experience / with and without Muslim faith) about religion, veiling and the fear of IS. It was a very fruitful conversation and excitingly, many commonalities were discovered among the participants. All agreed that they find a full veil up to the burqa scary - some because they clearly associated it with the IS, others because they had heard discussions about the burqa ban and they understood the burqa as a symbol of religious extremism. It was also nice to hear a comment from a participant about the difference between a coup and a revolution. She said "Revolution is made by the people, coup is made by the military". The girls from the Schilleria for example did not know that the wars in Arab countries were preceded by revolutions, but the coup in Turkey kept them busy. In the practical part, participants were able to design stencils, cut them out and then spray them on bags to take home. Saturday we met at the Schilleria in Neukölln for the street art graffiti workshop and even designed a wall poster that still adorns the entrance of the Schilleria today.

Skateboard workshops

Already for the first date of the skateboard workshops on July 15, 2017 with the NUK Ruschestraße more than 15 girls showed up.

Berlin fall vacations 2016 - HipHop workshops 2nd round

The DJ* workshop at the Schilleria in Neukölln was bustling and noisy, but there were some very DJ-enthusiastic girls who enjoyed trying their hand at the turntables and even managed to build some baby scratches and first smooth transitions between songs one afternoon. Girls from Hellersdorf, Neukölln and Lichtenberg took part in the skateboard workshop at the Statthaus Böcklerpark . The workshop on graffiti & street art at the youth club Manege was particularly successful, because for the first time girls from the nearby emergency shelter in Karl-Marx-Strasse also took part in the workshop. The next week we started our hip hop dance workshop at the InVia Mädchentreff in Karlshorst. At the rap workshop in the Tivolotte, girls from the NUK Ruschestraße texted together with girls from the Tivolotte and the girls club Schilleria. At the street art/graffiti workshop in Hellersdorf's Hella Klub it was mainly girls from the Ruschestraße emergency shelter and from the Hella Klub itself who took part.

Winter vacations 2017 - HipHop camp at the youth club Feuerwache, Friedrichshain

The winter vacation camp with rap, DJ, breakdance and street art workshops took place at a central location, the youth club Feuerwache in Friedrichshain, which had proven to be very accessible for the girls from different parts of the city. We began each day with a joint breakfast. Then we began each day with a joint round, either to revisit what had gone on the previous day or to bring the new participants into the group. On the first day we started with a detailed round of getting to know each other and the painting of a poster "This is us". Thanks to Arabic and Farsi translation, we were able to bring together all 28 girls who showed up on the first day and communicate the day's program well. It was definitely wild and bustling, but was a lot of fun for everyone - including our team. Everyone was also happy about the jointly cooked lunch, which two to three girls each helped to prepare in the kitchen. The girls spread out to the individual workshops after the get-to-know-you and welcome round. We had all four hip hop elements graffiti/street art, breakdancing, DJing and rap represented. Already on Wednesday, the rappers* and DJ*s joined forces and showed us written lyrics at the end of the day. The beat was provided by participants of the DJ* workshop. During the week, several texts were written by girls from Hellersdorf as well as two texts by girls from Afghanistan, in Farsi and in German. Thursday we spent with a walk to the Cassiopeia Berlin to test the stage, which we will use for our final event on April 8, 2017. At Cassiopeia, the girls who had participated in the DJ workshop were able to DJ on stage and play the music for the rappers*. Overall, bringing together very different girls with very different backgrounds worked out much better than we would have ever suspected. Very interesting conversations emerged. The intercultural understanding worked much better than we had hoped through the topics of hip hop and skateboarding with the protected framework of the girls' workshops and spaces.

March 2017 - HipHop workshops and preparation for closing festival

Following our winter break week, we met up with the girls again for the first time for a graffiti/street art workshop at Hella Klub in Hellersdorf. The participants had already thought during the winter break week that they would like to design the flyers and posters for the closing festival themselves, so we arranged to meet at the Hella Klub to design and draw the flyers there and to create stencils with "Spot on, girls". We took advantage of the whole Saturday at the Hella Klub. Almost all the girls who had participated in the winter break week were there again. The logistics of getting there were a bit complex, as we had to gather girls from different shelters and girls' meetings in Neukölln, Tempelhof Lichtenberg and Hellersdorf and first collected them at different meeting points to travel together to the Hella Klub.  The flyers turned out beautifully. We couldn't even decide which flyer to use for the invitation in the end and decided to duplicate all the flyers. So there was one flyer in Farsi, one in Arabic and a total of four different flyers in German.

April 8, 2017 - Final Festival

We opened the doors at 11:00h for a large group of very excited girls. Not only the participants of the winter vacation week came to the workshop. They brought a few more friends with them, so we started the day with over twenty girls already in the morning for breakfast together. Together we designed and painted baseball caps / caps with street art and graffiti.

Two girls had agreed to take over the moderation of the day, two other girls wanted to waitress and ask the visitors for their drink wishes, a few others were eager to take over the admission situation. We had invited a teamer who did a workshop with the girls on admission and security. The main topics were how to greet guests in a friendly manner, how to recognize who should better not enter the party and how to intervene in a de-escalating manner in case of conflict. The workshop was very well received, with more than half of the participants taking part. The other half rehearsed again the procedure, practiced hanging up, rapping and dancing. The girls who participated in the workshop took over the door checks and entrance talks for the party. Punctually at 16h we opened the doors and welcomed parents, families and friends of the girls as well as many visitors we had invited from the project. Two participants started the party with DJing, our teamer only had to stand by and control, because the two girls DJed very confidently. The girls started the concert with three different lyrics of the participants and a cover song. Then came the dance performance of the jointly developed choreography. After that the stage was cleared for the performances of YANSN, PYRANJA and FRESHFLUKE. The party ended with a jointly sung song with all the girls on stage. After it looked for a short time in the morning as if the participants didn't dare to go on stage or didn't perform anything because of shame, they started very confidently with their performances and shone with success. Nobody from our team would have dared to hope in advance that it would go like this. We would like to thank once again the Projektfonds Kulturelle Bildung / Kubinaut for the support!