In the volunteer editorial team, volunteers for Chemnitz 2025 publish reports on their experiences, assignments and adventures around the European Capital of Culture.
Danny is 44 years young and was born and grew up in Karl-Marx-Stadt. He emigrated "briefly" to the east of Mallorca from 2006-2007. But then he was drawn back home to Chemnitz. He has been active as a volunteer since April 2024, including at the Hat Festival, the Tietz fairground and the Kosmos Festival.
I arrived at the Chemnitz 2025 office in the former Schmidtbank around midday on 18 January, the day of the opening, and there was already a hustle and bustle of volunteers there. On this day, the Chemnitz 2025 office served as the "volunteer centre" and a retreat for breaks and catering. Accreditation on site went quickly, wristbands on my wrist and Dirk, the head of the volunteer programme, arrived with the first assignment for me as a "jumper". There was still time for a game of "Capital of Culture-Name-Land" with well-known volunteers. I was given Colin, a debut volunteer on his very first assignment, and we were told to go to the Nischel stage, the big stage for the opening show at the Karl Marx Monument. Once there, two volunteers were waiting for us for the handover/task. The task was to clear the stage of snow/ice and moisture. However, the sunshine had already cleared the stage of all moisture, so our task was now to make it "broom clean". So broom at hand, off we went! After the job was done and we had taken a few photos of the Nischel, we waited a while and asked whether we were still needed on site. We were no longer needed, so we went back to the Chemnitz 2025 office to be deployed for another stand-in task.
On the way, we received the message via the pilot community that we were expected behind the Parteifalte, the office building behind the big stage, for "technification" with additional reinforcements. Due to various demos taking place at the same time, we had to go straight there. Bea and Bernd reinforced our small team, the four of us were given radios and a briefing on an overview map with a zone marked in red, which became our task. The planned "drone ballet" needed a certain flight radius within the red zone. According to the map, we were to report people who were in the red zone to air traffic control via radio at four points so that air traffic control could respond. If one of the aircraft crashed, there was a risk of an accident, which we wanted to avoid. "Please be at your assigned points by 6.30 pm." "Ok, all right." We decided to use the open time slot of one hour for a break/strengthening, so off we went to the Chemnitz 2025 office. We watched the livestream of the ceremony in the opera house, accompanied by a potato soup and a cup of coffee. 18.at 8 pm, we returned as a team to our pre-selected positions behind the party fold. Reinforced by teams from security, who politely delegated people around the red zone, our deployment became very easy. When the message came over the radio that the planned action could be postponed or even cancelled, we stayed on site until, unfortunately, the announcement came that the planned drone ballet could not be started due to a technical fault. We were all disappointed by the cancellation. Well - that's life!
A little later, I got the message that all the pilots should gather at 9.00 pm on the Nischel stage for the photo session. The photo was then taken with all the people who were involved in the opening day, such as the police, stage crew, our volunteer leader Dirk, the programme director Andreas Schmidtke and colleagues from Chemnitz-2025 and many more. A few of the pilots were now in a party mood and we went as a small group to the rave on the market square, where my assignment was coming to an end. A crazy, unexpectedly wonderful assignment.