The c/o pop festival has a much more female line-up this year. 54 percent of the acts at the festival are women, and half of the speakers at the c/o Pop Convention are women.
Elke Kuhlen, Director of the c/o pop festival says: “We see it as our responsibility not only to promote young talent, but also to do justice to the topic of gender equality, but also LGBTIQ* and the visibility of people of color to make our program more diverse year after year.”
That’s why the festival is working for the third time with the KeyChange network, which campaigns for more gender equality in the music industry. In addition, c/o pop is entering into partnerships for the first time with MEWEMEuropa Networking, a project aimed at giving women access to leadership positions and entrepreneurship, and with the Parenthood in Music initiative, which is about parenthood in the music industry.
In addition, with c/o quer there will be a whole day of festival with a program by and for queer people for the first time. c/o queer takes place in cooperation with ANDERS&GLEICH, the LAG Lesben in NRW eV and the Queer Network NRW as part of c/o Ehrenfeld.
Visitors can look forward to acts such as the queer-feminist rapper Finna and the all-female quartet Friedberg around singer Anna Friedberg, who are known for their mixture of post-punk, alt-rock and seductive pop songwriting. Other exciting acts from the colorful festival program are the singer Paula Hartmann, who mixes hip-hop samples and pop elements with auto-tune and trap, or Priya Ragu, who incorporates the sounds of her cultural heritage, such as Krishna mantras, traditional tabla and the Tamil language.
c/o pop will open on April 20 this year with a performance by the band Bilderbuch, who will play »Yellow is the Field« on the stage of the Cologne Philharmonic as part of their tour.
For the first time, the c/o pop Festival is hosting a voguing ball, The Crystal Ball, together with Crystal Saint Laurent from the House of Saint Laurent. The ball was primarily created as a space for empowerment, in which the participants can develop individually. It serves to give visibility to marginalized groups that are still affected by racism, homophobia and transphobia.
The c/o pop Festival and the industry meeting place c/o Convention have been held as an event for music and pop culture since 2004. Since 2019, c/o Ehrenfeld has also been established in this context, where free concerts, workshops and panels take place.
This year the festival will take place between April 20th and 24th in Cologne.
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