Konk shows c.neeon. It sounds like a secret code, but it was in fact a tribute to the Fashion Week at the end of January 2009 that brought together two of Berlin’s creative icons: the avant-garde boutique Konk in Berlin-Mitte dedicated a “retrospective” to the Berlin label c.neeon and its first four years of designs. Graphically inspired designs, experimental, bright to garish, but still wearable, absolutely Berlin – these are the defining features of the creations by fashion designers Clara Leskovar and Doreen Schulz. The c.neeon duo trained at the art school in Berlin-Weissensee. Berlin boasts nine schools for fashion design, which is more than any other European city. And since the two women won first prize at a fashion festival in France in 2005, their rise has been meteoric. This is why their designs were paraded not only by Konk at the Fashion Week, creative Berlin’s bumper fashion showcase. C.neeon also presented one of the 25 big shows at Germany’s most scintillating fashion event.
From a rear courtyard to the international catwalks – c.neeon’s success story is a genuine Berlin story. It’s similar to the stories of the labels Kaviar Gauche, Lala Berlin und Sisi Wasabi, three home-grown Berlin names that were also on show at the Fashion Week. “Berlin is an incredibly inspiring city,” says Zerlina von dem Bussche, founder and designer of Sisi Wasabi. Many members of the creative scene think likewise: Berlin pulsates, has tempo, a zest for life, and it’s trendy. It’s where east meets west, where rents are reasonable and there’s plenty of room to experiment with innovative ideas in the workspaces of newly renovated factory complexes. Berlin is the capital of creativity. As a UNESCO City of Design since 2006, it is not only part of the network of international creative cities, it also attracts trendsetters more than any other German metropolis.
Creativity is good for a city’s image, and meanwhile it has developed into a serious economic factor. The second cultural economy report published by the Berlin Senate in January 2009 speaks for itself: compared with the year 2000 the number of Berlin companies in the cultural and creative economy rose one third by 2006, while turnovers increased by a quarter. In Berlin 22,900 companies in the sectors books and the print media, games and IT, film and TV, music, art, design, advertising, architecture and the performing arts now generate a turnover of 17.5 billion euros per annum. This means that the “creative class” accounts for 21% of the city’s gross domestic product. Over one tenth of Berlin’s working population is involved in the creative economy: Berlin has 160,500 people working in the creative sector, though admittedly a large number of them are freelancers with low incomes. Forecasts predict that by 2015 Berlin’s “creative class” will actually increase to 200,000.The Berlin Senate would welcome this and wants to provide even more microloans than before to boost good creative ideas for business startups. In addition to this, Berlin supports creative people with a number of infrastructure investments and networking platforms, such as Create Berlin or creative-city-berlin.de. And institutions like the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg specifically sponsor individual sectors, such as films or games.
The most creative district is in the heart of the city. That’s probably the impression most people already had, but now it has also been confirmed by the cultural economy report, which shows that the majority of enterprises in the creative sector have addresses in Berlin Mitte or Prenzlauer Berg. The epicentre of creativity is Oranienburger Strasse in Mitte with 452 creative enterprises. The “neighbourhoods of change and new beginnings”, such as Berlin-Kreuzberg, are now catching up, and the “old west” of the city in Charlottenburg and Friedenau offers established creative quarters.
The most creative Berlin minds, around 36,300 people, are active in the film industry. In terms of the number of enterprises, the largest creative sectors are books and print media, architecture, software and games. The advertising market has experienced above average growth with a new total of 2,550 agencies, even though their turnover lies well behind the classic advertising centres of Düsseldorf, Hamburg and Frankfurt. Digital game designers and programmers are the absolute high-flyers: the number of enterprises has more than doubled in Berlin since 2000 and now stands at 1,540. They also generated the highest annual turnover, 6.7 billion euros, in the city’s creative sector. That exceeds the turnover of the book, print media and film sector by two billion euros. “The strong infrastructure for film and music offers good conditions for developers of entertainment software,” says Wolfgang Siebert of Radon Labs, one of the largest German computer game producers. “This cluster attracts skilled personnel.” As a result, Berlin has many qualified freelancers who can join his team at short notice when project loads increase. Christian Sauerteig of The Games Company sums up the situation concisely: “Berlin is simply ideal for the games industry.”
But this can apply equally well to other creative sectors, for instance the fashion trade. In January 2009 Berlin announced that the streetwear tradeshow “Bread & Butter” will be returning from Barcelona to the place where it was founded. In July the models and designers will be transforming the old Tempelhof Airport into the latest fashion design hot spot for three days. Welcome to the creative capital.
