Meet Daniela - our member of the month in May!

Introduction round: Who are you and where are you from?
My name is Daniela and originally I am from Munich.

What made you come to Berlin?
I studied Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at an art academy in Milan, Italy, and for my studies I had to do an internship, which I did at the transmediale festival here in Berlin. I fell in love with the city during that period and stayed. I continued to work for the festival for 4 editions in total, and since one year I work as a freelance curator and cultural manager.

What exactly do you do? What's in the pipeline for the near future?
I work for different projects, at the moment mainly for the Disruption Network Lab and for a science [&] art festival here in Berlin, the State Festival. For both projects I work as curator, i.e. I work on the content development. Especially the latter is an extremely interesting project and challenge for me, as I will get to curate the art exhibition for the festival. In addition to these curatorial jobs I write about art, and sometimes do translations for art publications, exhibitions, etc. from Italian and English into German.
Apart from the two big projects mentioned above that I will work on and collaborate with this year, some smaller collaborations with single artists for books, small exhibitions, etc. are in the pipeline — which mainly means to first develop clear ideas and then write funding applications.

Since when do you cowork at Office Club?
I am still a newbie at Office Club, I started to come work here in April.

What is the benefit of using a coworking space for you?
I have to do a lot of research and a lot of writing in this period. Usually I do this at home, as I have to travel the city a lot for the projects I work on, but in periods where I have less meetings or events to produce on site I sometimes get a bit of cabin fever at home. I like working at home and not being forced to respect office times and attendances, but at the same time I sometimes can concentrate better and am more productive in an environment where there are other people working. I like this concentrated atmosphere. I found this at Office Club and really like working here.

Which questions / problems could you help your coworking neighbour with?
Well, I guess my most useful skill for others here might be translation and proofreading! I also have quite some experience in drafting applications and budgets for funding applications. Less practical, but more fun might be to talk about the projects themselves instead — happy to tell more about it in detail if someone should be interested in these kinds of things :)

Do you have favourite spots in Berlin? Something to recommend / consider especially for people coming here?
For the very best Neapolitan coffee I had so far here in Berlin I can only recommend to go check out the Bar Sigismondo on Kopenhagener Strasse, luckily not so far from Office Club Berlin Prenzlauer Berg. It is a lovely Italian family running the place, and they not only make great coffee but also simple but delicious pasta dishes.

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Thanks a lot and all the best to you!