Reeperbahn Festival

Awareness: For a safe and respectful togetherness

« Reeperbahn Festival should be a place where everyone can feel as comfortable and safe as possible. »

Our Vision

With Reeperbahn Festival, we want to create an event where everyone – employees, crew, visitors and artists – can feel as comfortable and safe as possible. We see Reeperbahn Festival as a cultural space for peaceful, respectful, communal and diverse coexistence. In order to raise awareness of inappropriate behaviour and discrimination and contribute to lasting social change, we have developed a number of awareness measures in collaboration with Act Aware e.V. and L’unità Security.

We believe that considerate coexistence is only possible if everyone takes responsibility together. We face the challenge of bringing together a wide variety of venues and participants in our festival concept. We meet this challenge by strengthening the awareness of all team members, offering various opportunities for interaction in our programme for trade visitors from the music industry, and providing education and support through trained awareness teams.

Your opinion is also extremely valuable in this process. Therefore, we welcome feedback at any time. If you have any comments or questions about the concept, please contact us via our social media channels (Facebook, Instagram) or by email.

Awareness Guidelines

We want to focus on prevention and create an offering that is accessible to everyone, regardless of how much knowledge they already have.

We have already started with our awareness campaign ‘Handbook of Shared Responsibility’. Here, we addressed eight topics, which we asked people from different fields about: awareness, language, safety, consent, representation, violence, accessibility and boundaries.

You can download these voices, background information, tips and reflection questions as a PDF (German Language) here

In addition, we equip most of the backstage areas with artist awareness kits. These contain information material and support items for artists, including spiky balls, acupressure rings, glucose tablets, strong chewing gum, sleep masks and earplugs.

Our awareness teams

Distinguishing feature: purple umbrella

Everything related to the awareness concept at the Reeperbahn Festival can be recognised by the umbrella symbol. Our awareness teams wear this symbol on their vests.

Awareness teams

Wednesday – Saturday

17–20 September

6 pm. – 2 am (mobile on site)

They can be recognised by their purple high-visibility vests with a large umbrella symbol, the word ‘Awareness’ and the L'Unità logo.

The service is aimed at anyone who feels threatened, harassed or bullied, who has experienced something specific or who is unsure whether something has happened to them.

The service is also aimed at all relatives and staff, the crew and the artists.

+49 176 13795940

It can be found on site at the Awareness Points at the Festival Village and on Spielbudenplatz, as well as on the move at the Reeperbahn Festival and in the associated clubs.

Awareness Point

Awareness Point Heiligengeistfeld

Wednesday - Saturday

17 - 20 September

11:00 am - 12:00 am

Awareness Point Spielbudenplatz

Wednesday - Saturday

17 - 20 September

11:00 am - 2:00 am

The Awareness Points are located in the Festival Village at Heiligengeistfeld and on Spielbudenplatz. They serve as a central point of contact for questions and offer support throughout Reeperbahn Festival.

The Awareness Point serves as a place of refuge where the Awareness Team can be found. Affected persons can come there directly or be picked up by the Awareness Team and taken there to find protection, support and peace.

The Awareness Point at Heiligengeistfeld is equipped with seating and retreat options such as sofas, cushions, blankets, as well as support and aid materials such as glucose tablets, water, sweets, stress balls, skills, hygiene items, plasters, electrolytes, sick bags and ear protection.

Mindful togetherness: We treat each other with respect and responsibility.

We respect individual boundaries and act according to the consensus principle "Only yes means yes!"

We do not conclude a person's gender from their appearance and strive to use gender-sensitive language.

We do not tolerate fascist and discriminatory symbols on our festival grounds.

Forms of discrimination such as sexism, racism, ableism, queerphobia as well as physical and psychological violence will lead to exclusion from the event.

Power of definition: Only the person affected decides what she perceives as a boundary violation. We believe her and are partisan with her.

What you can do…

Have you ever heard of the term "Allyship"?

Allyship means to become an ally, to take action and support those affected by discrimination.

You can be an ally by...

look & act actively - in the sense of the person affected.
listen to & follow discriminated people on social media.
inform yourself - about discrimination and terminology.
give affected people space & keep your perspective in the background.
donate time or money to disadvantaged communities.
talk to your friends and learn together.
address a grievance & intervene.
confront your privileges.

For terms related to awareness, here is a glossary.

Important: Always consider your own limits and those of others.

If you observe a situation that seems wrong or you feel that another person is not doing well, check your own capacity to intervene or support. If you feel unable to do so, be sure to tell another person.

If you decide to intervene, talk directly to the person involved and ask if she needs your support. If she does not want it, respect that. If she does need your support, ask her what would help her.

Important: Always respect your own boundaries and those of others

If you observe a situation that seems wrong to you or you have the feeling that another person is not doing well, check your own capacity to intervene or provide support. If you don't feel able to do this, make sure you tell another person.

If you decide to intervene, speak directly to the person concerned and ask them if they need your support. If they do not want this, respect this. If they do need your support, ask them what would help them.