Elke Kuhlen: “Cologne has an imperfect charm”

Cologne’s c/o pop is far more than a mere music festival – it’s an avant-garde, experimental celebration of social diversity that brings everyone together. Festival director Elke Kuhlen, who’s been part of it from the very beginning, is a famous face throughout Cologne as well as in the international music scene.

Scores of big-name German music acts (Tocotronic, AnnenMayKantereit, Scooter, Fettes Brot and Fehlfarben to name but a few) have graced the festival stage thanks to Elke, but she’s particularly passionate about newcomers or, as she puts it, “the latest hottest stuff”.

Away from work, the 47-year-old’s favourite listening is guitar-based music spanning everything from college rock to Britpop. But when it comes to booking acts, she likes to go for emergent performers from the electro genre – both for c/o pop and the Telekom Electronic Beats Festival.

Ehrenfeld: a creative hotbed

Elke came to Cologne in 2001 to start a booking job and she quickly felt at home in the city with its strong cultural community. “I wouldn’t say Cologne’s a pretty place,” she says. “There are certainly more period properties per square metre in Berlin – partly because Cologne was heavily damaged in the war.” But she does think the city has its own, imperfect charm and that the chaos generates creative ideas. Perhaps it was this creative charm that prompted c/o pop to move from the city’s Belgian Quarter to the Ehrenfeld district in 2019.

Elke and the festival team are based near Ehrenfeld station, right in the middle of Cologne’s most creative neighbourhood. Looking for recommendations on where you can go out in Ehrenfeld? Elke’s reply: “When I go out to bars and pubs here, it’s usually to do with work. I hardly ever go out outside of work.”

During the day, though, you will sometimes bump into her at one of Ehrenfeld’s cute cafés. But she also has a favourite place where she can recharge her batteries far from the hustle and bustle of the city: the allotment garden she and her husband bought a few years ago in the Bergisches Land region just outside Cologne. “I can switch off completely there,” she tells us.

Abu Dhabi, adieu! Hello again, Cologne!

There are lots of people who’d love to get paid for constantly hanging out with stars from the world of music. Elke suspects you could probably study something like Culture Management nowadays but her own route into the profession was less conventional. “The last ‘official’ certificate I received was the one I got when I left school!”

She still rose rapidly in the music industry though – through a mix of side jobs, contacts and talent. At some point, she was even offered a job as a festival organiser in Abu Dhabi. “But it wasn’t any good,” she tells us. “When I look back, all I see is loads of incredibly rich but totally uninspired people.” Luckily, she quickly decided to return – to the creative imperfection of Cologne.