Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
My mind works in strange ways, it’s very visual, I remember awkward things happening around me just like film snippets, and a lot better than facts you’re supposed to know as part of the normal curriculum.
I like eating, sleeping, and I love taking long hot showers. In this last field I consider myself an amateur on the edge of becoming a professional.
What do you consider your distinctive achievement?
With the above approaches (which come from the heart) I got to be one of the co-founders of designmetropole aachen, an open network of creative heads. Also it made me a strategic company consultant without prefabricated recipes but with empathy and thus much better insights (I am very proud to hear this from customers). And eventually this all gives me the opportunity to connect people. We even put this into a great project: hellodesingertour.eu, a yearly 1 – 31 october decentral design festival in our Belgium-Netherlands-Germany border region where designers from all fields and the design industry can set up events like open-door-days, tattoo-design-workshops, networking dinners, furniture design battles, expos, vhatever… and connect, get visibility, meet new people, new colleagues and projects across country borders…
What are you looking forward too?
Edition 2 of hellodesignertour.eu, plus the strong thoughts and ideas that come out of the more quiet students of mine, and kicking their butts to become more extrovert.
Which advice would you give to other professionals?
Without any network or experience in the field I started my little one-man design company SÜLZKOTLETT right after I got my diploma. I did feel quite naive at the time, but we live in an age of choices where it is more important to start and do something than to try and find out ahead of time which one out of the millions of options is the best one. Ideas are nothing. Do it! And the ‘new’ is usually just a new combination of ‘old’, plus it should be within reach. Formulate a vision, see who could be collaborators, adapt your vision from the feedback you get, be open-minded, get going in small steps, reflect, communicate openly, don’t let failures make you stop, be cool, don’t be an asshole, floss, love your parents, eat fish.
What are the challenges that we need to come to make about cultural entrepreneurship more accessible?
Financing is always the critical part, plus no one in politics and the administration ever wants to be a forerunner, a first, which is risky, but a second first. Real entrepreneurial characters among us creatives don’t need much help, they’ll do it anyways. Think about the other ones. There need to be more networking event series with a concept on how to connect creatives with the rest of the ecomony. They’re like water and oil. ‘I want fans’ vs ‘I want a business model’. Something repetitive or something where you create a shared extreme experience. Events that create mutual trust (it takes a while to grow).
