The fourth part of our interview serie The Berlin Experts puts the spotlights on the online magazine and event guide Don’t Panic Berlin represented by editor Indi Davies. Started off in 1999 as a free printed publication about arts and culture in the UK, Don’t Panic has hit the streets of Berlin a few years ago and since then it has been keeping us updated with all the latest arts, music, events, style and film news happening in our city and all around the world. Get an insight into Don’t Panic Berlin’s developments and its editor Indi Davies’ personal engagement with the city, after the jump.
There are so many ways one can connect with other people, but what has motivated you to do it through an online magazine?
I set up Don’t Panic Berlin with my close friend Lucy, we came over to Berlin around 2009 from London. Don’t Panic is a well-established company in the UK and we were actually approached to start a small franchise by the guy who founded it. We started with a printed version which turned into a website in 2011. Me and Lucy had been doing projects together beforehand, from photography to drawings to short films, so we were never short of ideas for how we wanted it to be. And in terms of connecting with other people it’s been really inspiring to meet so many people doing such different things in Berlin, and to be able to support their work in some way.
Don’t Panic Berlin started as as a free printed publication. Did you already have a vision at the beginning on how your engagement with Berlin would develop?
The website definitely came later than we thought it would. As a monthly printed publication Don’t Panic came as a brown paper envelope filled with flyers for local events, with occasional stickers/ fanzines/ artwork and a collectable A2 poster. It was a lot of fun to work in paper and commission artists to provide designs each time, but in some ways it was also a bit limiting, for example the selection of flyers often wouldn’t always represent all of the things we wanted to recommend or talk about, so by the time we had something online it was exciting to have all that freedom and extend to interviews or stories.
What has influenced you the most throughout your work?
I think being newcomers to Berlin when we first started out was helpful in a lot of ways as we had so much energy to explore and investigate what was going on in the city from late morning until early morning most days. We had no preconceptions so we just found the whole place really inspiring and intriguing. Coming straight from London it was amazing to be somewhere so free in terms of people setting up projects, businesses and spaces. I guess we would have been out discovering the city whatever, so to do it in a productive way was great.
Why should people check out Don’t Panic Berlin? What makes it different from other Berlin-based magazines?
In terms of an event guide it’s different because it’s pretty selective, we recommend parties, concerts, food/fashion/art events that we’d be interested in going to ourselves or that friends are hosting, and events you might not otherwise find in a mainstream listings. As for our blog posts we’ve covered a lot of different things, some are shared articles from the UK website, some are interviews with people that have interested us, from a mushroom specialist to a touring musician to a Berlin bookstore or Fanzine. We also regularly feature mixes by Berlin DJs we’ve enjoyed, plus our designer Alan Woo did a pretty slick job of the website!
If you had the opportunity to change something in the cultural scene of our city, what would it be? Why?
I don’t have many major complaints… Maybe I’d start by imposing unlimited free access to state museums and art galleries, it’s something I miss about London. Another thing I might have suggested a while ago is bringing a more diverse selection of music into the clubs here, but I feel this is changing a lot anyway now, the arrival of a venue such as Chesters for example has signified a shift, plus I often hear people saying there’s no live music culture here which I would contest, you just have to dig for it, or maybe check our listings from time to time!
