The Cairo – Space for Future and Music

For over 33 years, the youth cultural centre Cairo has offered a space for music, art and educational programmes. Sprachrohr spoke with Petra Irmscher from the management team about what makes Cairo so special, how the past year under coronavirus conditions has affected daily work and the cultural offering, and how the Cairo team looks to the future.

Sprachrohr: First of all, for someone who doesn't know Cairo, how would you describe Cairo? What makes Cairo special for you?

Petra Irmscher: Here at Cairo we provide a platform for various offerings in the culture and creative sector, which are developed and carried out by young people themselves. This splits into the events and education sector. The education sector includes all the workshops and courses, pottery, photo lab and video studio. In the events sector, the focus is on concerts and theatre, but we also offer film screenings and readings. So we have a colourful mixed programme.

And what's special about it is that the impulse doesn't come from us in the office, but everything is initiated by the people themselves, simply because they feel like doing it. At first they might not even know how to organise it or don't have the spaces or capacities to carry it out. And then they come to us with the question: "Can I do it this way? Can you help me with that?". That's then our educational remit, because we in the office are employed as social workers by the city, our positions and the building are financed by the city.

And especially in the workshop sector it's really lovely to see when young people try themselves out in a leadership role for the first time and can gain initial experience. Particularly with the dance courses, some participants start leading courses themselves from the age of 15, simply because they feel like passing on what they've learnt.

So in that sense, Cairo also provides a platform for empowerment, for taking on personal responsibility and learning to deal with it?

Absolutely! Also because when carrying out events, people learn what you need to pay attention to in general. For example when it comes to meeting deadlines. Or when during the organisation you suddenly come across things you've never heard of before.

I think many young people grow from that. When a new events group is founded, of course not everything runs perfectly, but that's what we're there for. You might not notice that from the outside, but it's important to us to give feedback. The whole building functions according to this principle – the bar area, the sound technology. And all of it voluntarily – in some cases there's of course an allowance for expenses, but only we in the office are permanently employed.

I think what's nice about it is that Cairo also covers – to the extent that's possible – the function of a sociocultural centre, so it goes beyond art and culture, because many sustainability initiatives meet here, many socio-political lectures or for example the VoKü take place here.

Is the way Cairo functions – with the strong focus on volunteering – then a double-edged sword during the past year in the sign of the coronavirus pandemic? Because on the one hand there's of course the privilege that no livelihoods are directly threatened, but on the other hand this important and meaningful opportunity for engagement completely falls away?

Yes, you could say that. We're fortunate to be financed by the city, and we're also supported by a sponsoring association, so not much can happen to us initially. But we're employed as social workers in the youth and family department and thus have a clear educational remit. And that's of course difficult, because we see work with people here as our core task, and we simply can't do that anymore.

We're definitely trying to maintain intensive contact with our volunteers, and we're noticing that many people aren't doing so well. For me that's even worse than just having events cancelled. When all this engagement, which has grown over the years, which people provide in their free time, simply because they feel like it and to support others with it, suddenly can't happen anymore. That's a different perspective than for someone who has to pay their bills at the end of the month from organising events.

As I said: as far as that goes, we're doing well, we can't complain about that. And we've also always said: it's important to us that other small event venues that are doing worse, or generally people working in the events industry, get attention and support. Because whilst others don't know how they'll survive the next few months financially, for us it's initially "only" events that are falling away. But of course a lot is lost with that too.

Do you have the concern that many people who normally always got involved – as organisers, event planners – and couldn't do that during all this time, that they've moved on during the time it was gone? Because they might have closed that chapter, and then when events can take place "normally" again, a lot suddenly falls away? That the entire scene in and around Cairo is weakened?

Yes, we definitely have that fear. Whether it's always justified, I don't know, because it's always possible anyway that people move on, reorient themselves, so we can't really assess that yet. I think it depends a lot on how much people felt and actually were able to be here in the meantime. For example, as far as the photo lab courses are concerned, which had to stop completely, or the dance courses – whether people come back or not can't be said yet. And on the other hand: people who come new to Würzburg often don't know us because of the reduced offering. That's going to be a lot of work again, making ourselves visible again.

How did your work actually look over the course of the last year? How has the last year gone from Cairo's perspective?

We also had the privilege that we coped financially quite well with all the event cancellations at first. But then we also explicitly said, precisely because we have the opportunity, we want to support young local artists and also started booking bands ourselves in the summer and holding events, because we naturally noticed that many volunteer organisers didn't really dare to do that after we'd had to cancel so much beforehand.

In June we were allowed to open again and then had many events over the summer, everything that could be organised at short notice. And it actually worked out well. It was of course unusual – we naturally had to maintain distance, everything was seated. And for everything we had to develop hygiene concepts and then constantly revise them. But we noticed: it works, and because we had the courtyard available, we were the only place for young people that could offer something like that. And because of that we also felt responsible for doing as much as possible, even though there were of course many uncertainties.

When we then realised that the concept was working, we also continued planning for autumn and beyond and developed many new formats, for example a mulled wine winter market with live music and craft stalls. Of course we then had to cancel all of that again. Alternatively concert streams were planned, but we largely couldn't implement those either – that was also one of the most frustrating things for me, we kept getting smaller from a big plan, and that didn't work out either.

But at least we learned that it can basically work that way, and we continued with the attitude that we keep planning, if it can take place, it takes place – and if not, we've meanwhile also gained enough experience with cancelling (laughs).

What was the response to the streams as a concert substitute, so to speak?

Difficult question. Among our organisers and also among us, the scepticism was initially quite high. Especially because concert streams were ubiquitous in between and the question was: "Do I really want to watch that after a whole day in front of the computer?". I personally didn't want to. That's why we first had to find a way to make the whole thing really feel good, namely to convey the Cairo, the feeling of hearing a concert in exactly this environment. And with the livestream we were able to do in winter, with Amygdala, we then also got the feedback: "Cool, I recognise Cairo again" and it was really nice that we
achieved what we wanted with it, namely at least to offer people who know the house a sense of recognition. That's also our general thinking, even when we had our poster give-away action at Christmas, so to speak giving people a piece of Cairo "to-go".

The plan for the coming months is now in place again. How difficult was it after the experiences
in autumn and winter to now approach the new planning optimistically and to what extent did
the experiences you've gathered then flow into it?

When the first events had to be cancelled in March last year, my thought was still: okay, that's now for a few weeks, then it will change again. Then the events were moved from spring to autumn, then to the next spring, and now we're in spring and it's clear that it will still take a while until the situation is okay again – of course that's only very little plannable, but still you get a certain routine at some point, learn to assess it better. We can say we were able to hold events last summer, could take a lot with us for the coming one. And if really nothing should be possible there, we've also learned here and are meanwhile well set up when it comes to streaming. That means as long as even just two people can be together, we can stream talks, or for example concerts by solo artists. At least we can definitely do that.

And even after the cancellations in winter we told ourselves, okay, that's just how it is now, then we'll put our energy into summer planning instead. We've now also set up many new workshop formats, planned courtyard concerts and are seeing what else we can do with severely limited participant numbers.

To end the conversation on a positive note, what would be something positive
that you could take with you from the last year?

We also took the opportunity to reflect on what happens here, to think about who are the people who come here, who aren't we reaching or who perhaps doesn't have access and how can we reach them too. And besides, we renovated a lot! We repainted, built shelves. I think some people will be surprised when they're back in the house.

Thank you very much for the conversation!

The interview was edited and shortened for better comprehension.