CCB Magazine

Nachgefragt with Hajo Toppius: "A certain naivety sometimes does no harm"

Photo: Toppius

After consulting is before a career: What do creative professionals do after consulting with us? In part 7 of our "Nachgefragt" series, we talk to Hajo Toppius, who was in our consultancy two years ago. He is co-founder of the office for cultural affairs Kollegen 2,3 and founder of Selbstgebauten Musik Bausätze GbR.

Kreativ Kultur Berlin: Hallo Hajo. Please introduce yourself.

Hajo Toppius:My name is Hajo Toppius. I studied musicology, philosophy and history and am co-founder of the production office Kollegen 2,3, where artistic and musical concepts are developed and realized.
 

Kreativ Kultur Berlin: How did you start? How did colleagues 2,3 come about?

Hajo Toppius:Kollegen 2,3 emerged at that time from various cultural associations. For ten years now, we have been developing projects that thematically move between art and the city. This means that our projects are realized with artistic, musical means and at the same time show a reference to the public space. Our goal is to create functional art, which first and foremost always has a participatory or interactive claim. With this claim, we have, for example, set up a participatory music festival, which is now taking place for the seventh time under the name Festival für selbstgebaute Musik.

Product purchasing, delivery times, sales, marketing - in these issues we needed support from the Kreativwirtschaftsberatung

Kreativ Kultur Berlin:  You came to us for a consultation in 2018. What questions did you come with?

Hajo Toppius:We developed a product at that time, and it was a so-called musical instrument kit series. The idea behind this product was to build instruments ourselves from recycled materials. As a production office, our focus up to that point had been on events, so we had experience with that. In contrast, we were not familiar with product development at all. In addition to specific financing issues, we were primarily concerned with product purchasing, delivery times, sales, and marketing - we wanted to get to the bottom of all this. These were completely new areas for us and it was clear to us that we needed support in these questions. And that's why we turned to Kreativwirtschaftsberatung.

Helpful advice was that we got a very specific tip: the Coaching Bonus from IBB

Kreativ Kultur Berlin: How could the counseling help you? No modesty please. Honesty is the best policy.

Hajo Toppius:The consulting was especially helpful because we received a very concrete tip: namely, the Coaching Bonus from IBB. We were already very well networked in Berlin's cultural scene, but the Kreativwirtschaftsberatung helped us a lot in our search for concrete contact points. Melanie Seifart also gave us the name of the IBB employee in charge. We knew exactly where to go and who to contact.
 

Kreativ Kultur Berlin: What happened afterwards?

Hajo Toppius:After the consultation, we simply followed Melanie's advice and took advantage of the Coaching Bonus, an IBB support program. The Coaching Bonus aims to improve the competitiveness of Berlin companies - through professional business coaching. That's where we participated. Melanie made the contact for us directly, which was really great. As a result, we founded a new company for our kit series. In the coaching sessions, we were then advised by a business coach on economic issues and the expansion of our new company for over a year, which was really fun. Last year, we were again supported by IBB with the GründungsBONUS program and a financial grant for the expansion of our company.
 

Kreativ Kultur Berlin: If you could give a tip to others: What is important when financing projects like yours? What do you need to keep in mind? What mistakes should be avoided? 

Hajo Toppius:The most important thing - and this applies to projects of all kinds - is realistic time planning. You should calculate all production times, delivery times, working times, etc. precisely and plan twice the time for everything - this is the wisdom of my (colleague and) co-founder Sascha Schneider, which has always proven true so far. Our experience has shown me that projects always take longer than expected. And of course, you should keep a close eye on your finances; if you calculate too optimistically, you can quickly run out of money. But just as important as good planning are courage and stamina. Things can always go off schedule, so it's important to stay calm. On the other hand, a certain naivety is sometimes also healthy, because if you think too much beforehand about how long something can take and what all needs to be considered, then you might not even start.
 

Kreativ Kultur Berlin: Hajo, what's next? Where will your Kollegen 2,3 and you be in 5 or 10 years?

Hajo Toppius:On the one hand, our goal is to build up an operation that is economically viable, whereby the idea of profit is not the focus. On the other hand, and this may sound a bit pathetic, we also want to make our urban environment a little bit more beautiful, that is our aspiration. We develop artistic formats that are not reserved for the art world, but have an added social value. Our team comes from fields such as social science, cultural studies and philosophy - the social aspect has been at the forefront from the very beginning. And we intend to keep it that way in the future.

More information about Hajo and the Produktionsbüro Kollegen 2,3 and the Selbstgebaute Musik Bausätze GbR

The Interview was conducted by Katjana Berndt | Kreativwirtschaftsberatung Berlin

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