Team

The sideviews artists hail from various creative backgrounds, including theatre, music, literature, dance, design, art and architecture.

Anja Scheffer actress and director, is the creative director of sideviews. After studying acting at the Rostock University of Music and Theatre, she played numerous roles in film and television, radio plays and theatre. She works at the interfaces of theatre/ video/ visual arts/ art & education, most recently mainly in a museum context. She is constantly evolving her own method of project development with theatrical resources. Her work facilitates social interaction within diverse communities, establishing new perspectives and creating convergences between social, educational, artistic and historical issues, encouraging reflection on them in the context of current local and global questions. Projects have included LivingTOgether (German Consulate General Toronto, 2015), Anspiel (2014-17 by Seraphina Lenz for the International Garden Exhibition Berlin), the theatre profile of the Refik Veseli School in Berlin-Kreuzberg (2011-18) as part of the Cultural Agents for Creative Schools programme, and the creative research project Tropicology (2020-21) in Brazil. As part of the Schattenmuseum, she has been initiating interactive projects since 2018 – for the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Dresden Children’s Biennale (SKD), the Berlinische Galerie, KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), the Berlin Biennale and the House of World Cultures (Berlin).

Silke Ballath

Silke Ballath worked with sideviews until 2024. Together with Anja Scheffer, she founded the youth committee Schattenmuseum. As a cultural agent, she accompanied numerous artistic-educational projects and school development processes in Berlin between 2011-2021. She is interested in educational work that incorporates decolonial, collaborative and experience-based processes of knowledge production into pedagogical and art mediation practice and conducts research on this topic.

 

Cindy Riqui – After training as an educator in Thuringia, Cindy Riqui established her new life in Berlin, switched to the TV and entertainment industry in 2001 and worked as film manager for a TV production in the comedy sector. Following the birth of her son in 2011, she was employed as a payroll and financial accountant at the GRIPS Theater, the children’s and youth theatre, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019. She has supported sideviews on the board since 2016.

Anna Bartels is a cultural producer and cultural mediator. She studied Cultural Studies and Romance Studies at the University of Bremen with a focus on cultural anthropology and youth (sub)cultural studies. From 2017-2022 she worked as Coordinator for Cultural Education at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), where she initiated and accompanied numerous school collaborations and youth projects. Since 2022, she has been working with sideviews e.V. as a project manager, among others for the youth committee Schattenmuseum.

Seraphina Lenz Seraphina Lenz studied sculpture at the Münster Art Academy. The core of her artistic work focuses on the creation of urban spaces. In Berlin, she explores various living environments from the districts of Hellersdorf to Neukölln and researches the influence of history, architecture and consumption on perception and behavior. In long-term projects, she develops specific forms of cooperation. She recently showed her sculptural works in the white elephant gallery, in Schloss Biesdorf in Berlin and at the Biennale LandSchafftKunst in Brandenburg.

The Schattenmuseum (shadow museum) youth committee was founded in 2018 after several years of collaboration on school projects with the Jewish Museum Berlin. The youth committee consists of 14 young people who meet weekly and for holiday workshops in their free time. Together with sideviews, they aim to share their experiences with other museums, such as the Berlinische Galerie. By means of artistic formats, museums should be advised on their suitability for young people.

The individual projects are continuously documented by the young people at www.schattenmuseum.de.

Astrid Kleinert studied acting at the Berlin University of the Arts. After graduating, she worked in various theatres as well as in television and radio plays. From 2012 to 2015 she did an apprenticeship as an educator. She lives and works in Dresden. Her first collaboration with sideviews was with the “Ongoing Process- Matter of Perspective” project for the Children’s Biennale in Dresden (Archiv der Avantgarden).

Rainer Untch, ethnologist, filmmaker and media artist, works creatively with children and young people and is a freelance lecturer for film and animation at various youth cultural institutions in Berlin. He is co-founder of the “Initiative Aesthetic Field Research”, an association of artists with the aim of developing and implementing various formats for youth projects in which the self/other is explored and depicted by the combination of an ethnological viewpoint and the creative process.

Arna Vogel: since her theatre studies degree in Rostock, has immersed herself in the art of storytelling in its broadest and narrower sense, initially as a dramaturge at theatres and in the independent theatre scene, and then later as a cultural journalist for radio and the press, including radio drama for the RBB station. She has been involved in theatre projects with children and young people since 2011. In 2013/14, she studied “storytelling in art and education” at the UdK Berlin. Since then she has been a freelance storyteller, mainly at various primary schools in Berlin. She is responsible for press and public relations, research and dramaturgy for sideviews.

DJ B.Side  is a music producer, composer and songwriter with his own recording studio producing, for example, Mellowbag, Cappadonna (Wu-Tang-Clan), the Brothers Keepers or Backyardloops as well as composing soundtrack music for films such as Till Hastreiter’s “Status Yo!” or Lars Becker’s “Kanak Attack”. As a band DJ, he has toured with Guru’s Jazzmatazz and the New York Bush Babees and also as support act for highly regarded artists such as DJ Premier, Jazzy Jeff, Busta Rhymes, Jungle Brothers, The Beatnuts and Grandmaster Flash. He has played at almost all of Germany’s major festivals. He is also active as a photo and video artist and gives workshops for young people in songwriting, rap, music production, photography, image editing, video production and DJing.

Daria Kornysheva grew up in Moscow. After completing her studies at the Theatre Academy at the Moscow Art Theatre, she moved to Düsseldorf and attended the Düsseldorf Art Academy, from where she graduated as a master student. Since 1997 she has been working as a freelance stage and costume designer for theatres throughout Germany, including the Volksbühne Berlin, the Neuköllner Oper, the Staatstheater Stuttgart as well as theatres in Aachen, Halle, Magdeburg, Freiburg, Innsbruck and Vienna. As an art director, she was the designer on film productions such as “Status Yo”, “The Forbidden Girl” and “Image of Her”.

Giles Schumm: gained his BA in 1985 at Northumbria University in Creative Arts, a mixed-disciplinary course investigating ways of employing theatre, music and visual art approaches to support creative social interaction within diverse community groups, after which he worked in art therapy with young people with disabilities in Newcastle & then London. Since 2010 he has worked on music & art projects with children and young people in Berlin, helping to devise long-term projects with sideviews, such as “Auf der Mauer auf der Lauer” (2010), “WELTweit…Neu” (2014) and “GOAL 17 – Kinder machen Welt” (2022), as well as projects with youth art and cultural centre Schlesische27. A musician, Giles has a long history of involvement in various music and art projects, including the “Feedback Orchestra” Berlin.

Rene Wetzel handles the digitization and online themes at sideviews, creating websites and interactive formats such as Schattenmuseum.de. He has conducted workshops on editorial work for the Schattenmuseum youth committee and advises the committee on matters of online communication. As Senior Manager Strategic Business Development, he works at ubitricity on the energy transition and the decarbonization of mobility. As the founder of the agency MBD.berlin for the music and media industry, he has accrued many years of experience in marketing and digitization. He is also a recording and live musician and enjoys working on vintage cars.

Other colleagues:

  • Ruth Noack/ curator
  • Marcelo Rezende/ curator
  • Sebastian Grobler/ film director and professor
  • Daniel Harder/ director and producer
  • Tomma und Dr. Heino Luxa/ pharmacists
  • Dr. Çiçek Baçik/ Artist, educator and researcher
  • Wiebke Janzen/ Pedagogue
  • Moritz Scheffer/ graphics, Schattenmuseum youth committee
  • Sven Seeger/ choreographer and dancer
  • to be continued……..