c/o pop Festival and Convention 2022 – Networks and New Discoveries in North Rhine-Westphalia's Pop Music Scene

As part of the first visitor programme of the year, eight participants from Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Ukraine, including festival directors, programmers and representatives from the field of pop music promotion, visited the numerous concerts, networking and panel events of the c/o pop Festival from 20 to 25 April. The c/o pop Convention, which sees itself as a platform for networking and interaction for bands, artists and the associated ecosystem, also offered the opportunity for further networking.

The visitors' programme focused on the opportunity to get to know the initiators and the c/o pop team personally, including Convention Director Ralph Christoph and Yannick Zimmermann, Booking and Partnership Manager.

In addition, the visitors met with representatives of important institutions of pop music and cultural promotion in North Rhine-Westphalia: Peter Stark, communication and project manager of Create Music NRW (Landesmusikrat NRW), Linn Meissner, association chairwoman of musicNRWwomen* and project manager of popNRW (Landesmusikrat NRW and NRW KULTURsekretariat) as well as Till Kniola, expert for pop and film culture, Cultural Office of the City of Cologne.

During a tour of the exhibition "Electro. From Kraftwerk to Techno" exhibition at the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, a visit to c/o Ehrenfeld and a guided tour of the Cologne neighbourhood of the same name, the guests also had the opportunity to explore the local scene.