Monday, June 24
Community culture pop-up House of Colour robbed: Gear and equipment stolen
On Friday morning, House of Colour staff were shocked to find that laptops, podcast equipment, mixers and DJ gear had been stolen from their pop-up location on Gneisenaustraße in Kreuzberg. The space has no security cameras, so not much can be determined about the break-in for now. According to HoC co-founder Ben Olayinka, the lock on the door looked like it had been tampered with.
House of Colour, a community initiative organising events, parties and health workshops, works to platform people of colour and otherwise underrepresented artists and community organisers. “Especially for people of colour it’s really difficult to find supportive spaces that will give you a low-threshold chance to organise communities and host events, and that was our goal”, said Olayinka. “I’m worried that without projects like this, a lot of people won’t have a chance to engage with their passions and engage with their community. So, it just makes me really sad that this has happened.”
Much of the stolen equipment belonged to individual staff. “A lot of the stuff was people’s personal stuff. I brought a deck and a projector and Dan [Stern] [who also hosts the Berlin podcast Radio Spaetkauf] brought in all the podcasting equipment… All the stuff was kind of pieced together, so we didn’t realise how much we had until it was gone”.
The House of Colour team have put together a list of everything that’s been taken, and are currently busy fundraising. They have also written to local companies about loaning equipment. “Luckily more people are willing to lend stuff, and we have enough equipment that we are able to do this week’s events and slowly we’ll try to build back up”, said Olayinka. You can contribute to HoC’s fundraiser here.
