Student managers

The “student manager” project has been run by the Young Beethovenfest for three years now. A team of students from ten to twelve schools spend eight months working on the organization, funding and marketing of one concert from the main programme of the Beethovenfest Bonn. All of the roles in the Beethovenfest’s organizational team are shadowed by young people. The staff of the Beethovenfest accompany the students in all the work processes.

There are sponsoring appointments, negotiations with artists, agencies and co-operative partners as well as a special press conference. The students participate in the programme design and venue conception in collaboration with the performing artists. Fliers and posters will also be designed, produced and distributed by the young people. They will design their own website and  also use Twitter, Facebook and YouTube as information and marketing tools.

In addition to extensive teaching sessions in the different areas of work at the start of the project, there will also be several workshops and courses on subjects such as video training, microphone use and presentation, internet and network training, marketing design, concert introduction and sponsor presentation and support.

11 students from six secondary schools in Greater Bonn signed up to work for eight months from March 2010 on the organisation, financing and marketing of a festival concert as part of the “Student Managers 2010” project. Famed violinist Daniel Hope performed with the rock band BAKKUSHAN at Straßenbahnhalle Dransdorf under the title “BA ROCK” (“Barock” being the German word for “baroque”).

The students had to arrange meetings with sponsors and negotiate with other artists, agencies and cooperation partners. A press conference was successfully held on 11 May 2010.
The students were responsible for designing their own advertising and their own website www.schuelermanager-beethovenfest.de. The Facebook and Twitter networks were also being used as information and marketing tools. In addition to this, the students were keeping an online blog with reports on their work and what’s new.

Two concerts of the hiphop-classical band einshoch6 are organized completely by a team of students. 15 students from four different schools in Bonn were chosen from around 40 students. The students were assigned in small groups to the various departments of the Beethovenfest Bonn and then trained so they could deal with their tasks, from artistic planning to marketing and technical implementation, as professionally as possible. The project in this form is a pilot project which is attracting great media interest since it is the first and so far only one of its kind to date.

Marie Christine Schwalb, Student dramaturge

www.schuelermanager-beethovenfest.de