Open Mic
Hej, I’m Hanna and I came to Denmark for one year to work at a culture house named Kulturfabrikken in Nykøbing Falster. It is a vibrant place where you can attend creative workshops, chill in the café, go to concerts, skate and climb. As time passed by, I began to think about what my solidarity project could look like. I always loved the atmosphere at the concerts and just music in general, so I wanted to give people, and especially youngsters, a chance to share their passion for music. Therefore I organized an Open Mic evening in our concert hall, where you can play some music or perform something, get inspired by each other and have a fun night.
Once I had the idea, the planning began: finding a date, talking to people, planning the PR, holding meetings, making a budget plan, contacting potential participants and preparing everything for the evening. I made and distributed posters, wrote a promo text for the homepage, made posts and reels for social media and tried to spread the word as much as possible. After a while I had a crew and with the event coming closer we bought drinks and snacks and I figured out all the little details. It was really stressy from time to time, because you’re there from the first until the last step and it was a lot of responsibility organizing everything, but it also felt very nice to see how an idea becomes reality in the end.
People could sign up beforehand if they wanted to perform something on stage, but there was also the possibility to just spontaneously do something on the evening itself. As unfortunately there weren’t so many sign ups, I invited a rap duo and a band and I had a few people on a question mark before the event. Then the day before the band surprisingly cancelled, that was a bit of a setback. I decided on short notice to kind of rebrand the evening to make sure it would be a fun event. I would let the rappers play longer and then open the event as a karaoke night to make it very informal and motivating for people to come on stage and sing a little song. To introduce the karaoke I would sing something myself, which I had planned to do anyway. It was the last-minute solution I had in my mind and I really hoped it would work out.
The evening came and it turned out to be really nice, with some ups and downs, but it all worked out fine. The rappers had a good performance and I also did my song. After that, when the karaoke part was introduced, some people were already gone or didn’t take initiative to go on stage. Luckily some friends of mine eventually started singing songs and we had a really great time :)) It turned out to be different than I expected, but it became such a fun night with great memories!
Throughout the process I learned so much: about all the things you have to think of while planning such an event, about communication, about reflecting and acting upon feedback, about finding solutions and always thinking of new possibilities and ways to work things out. Music connects people and that evening really showed that to me, which was just wonderful ❤
