Dear A MAZE. Community!
A couple of months have passed since A MAZE. / Berlin and our statement in regard to the CoC violation at A MAZE. / Sheffield. In our statement we made promises, and we have taken some crucial steps into making them happen. Some of these were immediately implemented for A MAZE. / Berlin this year – artistic director Thorsten S. Wiedemann temporarily stepped back from his representative duties, was not present at the festival and is undergoing therapy to work on himself. We also improved creating safer spaces by making the Code of Conduct visible more prominently and included easy to read information as well as more contact persons. Furthermore, we developed a clearer formal protocol and team structure to respond swiftly to any incidents.
With the festival behind us, we continued improving A MAZE. on a structural level for future events over various constructive meetings. Changes that were long overdue since our team grew from 10 to 40 people with an additional 150 volunteers over the last 14 years. This more than necessitated a clear modus of communication. With our experience this year, we already decentralized many tasks, made them transparent and walked away with a strong feeling of trust in each other. A feeling we transformed into a set of rules to ensure maintaining our strengthened safer space for everyone everywhere - For guests as well as team members. As we announced working on those structural changes, we would like to follow up on them and share our new A MAZE. Standard:
Every event by and with A MAZE. will work under the “A MAZE. Standard”. It includes a Code of Conduct (CoC) and a set of Ground rules consisting of clear roles and a clear structure for the team.
Every event’s CoC will be compared to the A MAZE. Standard CoC. This includes the content as well as its visibility, enforcement and reporting methods. If A MAZE. can’t relate or there is no CoC, we will get in contact with their team to collaborate with them to provide the whole event with a safer space. As such, the A MAZE. part will always adhere to our Standard.
For clear roles, every event will have a core team with responsibility and ownership over their tasks for the event. Those department heads have knowledge and say in concept and budget and meet for checking synergies as well as setting milestone plans and an overview of tasks and needs from each other.
For clear structure, every event will have an organized and secure cloud folder with role based access, moderated and asynchron- and hybrid-friendly meetings with documented decisions and a guideline for changes or suggestions. Everyone is heard.
In order to ensure that this Standard is taken care of at each event, we created a group working on an organizational level and called it the …
A small volunteering group meeting bi-monthly for organizing upcoming events and ensuring that they uphold the A MAZE. Standard. They will also discuss the direction of A MAZE., opportunities for partnerships and community needs. In its first iteration, the flock will consist of long-time members Ana Jeličić (Safer Space and Village Coordinator), Matthias Löwenotter (Awards Curator and Discord Manager), Nomi (Animator and Illustrator), Sebastiaan Hoogstraten (Workshop Curator), Thorsten S. Wiedemann (Artistic Director) and Zuraida Buter (Program Curator).
We will try out this new restructure at our first upcoming event this month: The A MAZE. Digital PlayGround #2 at gamescom 2025, in Cologne, Germany. Onsite will be Anatol Glebov, Sebastiaan Hoogstraten, Yannika Markfort and Zuraida Buter. Thorsten S. Wiedemann is joining as artistic vision and will support the team for meetings towards new cooperations and other opportunities.