The Blogmakery offers consultancy and advice on already existing blogs and websites, as well as helping to conceptualise new blogs, manage the entire process of setting it up, fill it with content and monitor it at events. It helps with creating content, both textual and multimedia, and also advises on communication and link strategies.
The Blogmakery is a one-woman company set up by me, Nikola Richter, a writer, journalist and editor, originally from Bremen, Northern Germany, famous for its town musicians and the futuristic drop tower. I have lived in Berlin for ten years now. Having studied German, English and Comparative Studies in Tübingen, Norwich and Berlin and graduated with an M.A. from the Freie Universität Berlin, I combine comprehensive knowledge of the cultural and literary sector with an interest in online media and a broader perspective on political and social issues.
I have written several books, including poetry, short stories and plays as well as a documentary novel about the precarious situation of university graduates. After my training in journalism from 2005 to 2007 at the quarterly KULTURAUSTAUSCH, a magazine for international perspectives published by the Institute for Cultural Foreign Relations (ifa), I continued working there as a part-time sub-editor until February 2008. Most recently, I have worked as a sub-editor for the multi-lingual online European press review euro|topics (March 2008 to March 2009), a project of the German Federal Agency for Civic Education and n-ost, Network for Reporting on Eastern Europe, planning weekly dossiers on European current affairs and other issues debated in the European press.
Since then I have dedicated much of my time to blogging: I was responsible for the conceptualisation, planning and implementation of the Theatertreffen-Blog 2009, 2010 and 2011 (for the annual Berlin theatre festival Theatertreffen tt, Berliner Festspiele) which replaced the established festival newspaper for young journalists, and am now working on its fourth edition for the 2012 festival. The tt blog gives online reports on one of the most important German-speaking theatre festivals as well as offering seven up-and-coming arts bloggers the opportunity to experience and experiment with new multimedia formats as part of a team. Moreover, I was selected as one of 81 European participants to spent four months blogging on Europe and the European Parliament elections for the European blogging competition Th!ink about it, a project by the European Journalism Centre in the Dutch city of Maastricht and received an “impact award” for my posts. The book “Liebes-Erklärungen” (‘Declarations of Love’), co-edited with my sister Franziska Richter and published by Berlin-based Bloomsbury press was also accompanied by a blog. Another theater blog project was the newplays blog for the Theatre Biennial 2010 in Wiesbaden and Mainz, dealing with tendencies in European contemporary drama.
Recently, I am managing a literary blog together with the Berlin-based Bolivian writer Rery Maldonado where German and Latinamerican writers are posting short essays about their daily lives and big global questions such as violence, lies or new worlds in the web. Los Superdemokraticos, or LSD, as we named our literary political party, has been funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education in 2010 as part of the commemoration of the bicententarios and continues to be supported in 2011 as a platform for political-literary debate of a net-based global generation. In March 2011, Berlin independent publisher Verbrecher Verlag published our superdemokratic book with chosen posts and comments from the blog.
Finally, I like to share my experience and knowledge: I speak at conferences and also teach a postgraduate seminar at Freie Universität, Berlin, in the course of which my students and I set up and write for a faculty blog and visit media outlets in and around Berlin.
Together with the writer René Hamann I organised a literary salon at the Kreuzberg Café Johann Rose in the winters 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 where we presented Berlin-based writers from Germany and all over the world, such as the Irish writer Julian Gough, the English writer Clare Wigfall, the American journalist Nicholas Kulish (New York Times), the Portuguese poet and gardening philosopher Ivo Daniel Carmo or the Iraqi-in-exile Abbas Khider. German guests were, amongst others, Ron Winkler and Paul Brodowsky. By the way, Johann Rose serves probably the best cakes in town.
Currently I’m part of the “Cultural Leadership International 2011″ Programme of the British Council.
Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any question on planning and conceptualising blogs as well as live and event blogging or writing or cultural exchange. I’m happy to help!
