DeepL Berlin: street art workshop in the office, no wall needed

The first question before a creative workshop is rarely the procedure. It is where the thing is actually supposed to take place. At DeepL the answer was a table at a WeWork location in Berlin. Nobody needed more surface than an A3 sheet that day.

The starting point

Anyone planning a creative format checks the surface first. A yard or a free wall, and if both are missing, a rented hall. If none of that is available in the end, the format is usually struck off the list before anyone has talked about the content.

At DeepL the more awkward case was added. The site is a WeWork location, the rooms are rented, not the company's own building. Anyone who wants to put something on a wall there does not ask their own management but an operator. So the street art workshop ran in the office, at the tables where work is done anyway.

What happened on the tables

The work was done on individual white A3 sheets, each fixed to the base with masking tape. Next to them lay cutting mats and stencils cut from paper. Spray paint and markers stood in between, plus a metal sheet that served as a palette.

For the planning one thing about this matters: there is no surface to divide up. Nobody waits for a spot to open up at the front, and whoever joins later sits down on a free chair. The motifs are freely chosen and carry no company logo. On one sheet a snowboarder rides above an ice cream cone whose scoops fade from pink to blue. On another the same figure lies twice side by side, once as a blue outline and once fully sprayed.

The room

The workshop took place in a bright, open office space. Through the window front you see a tree and the facade of the building opposite. The work was done at long wooden tables with bentwood chairs; a large blue picture surface hangs on the wall.

That is the circumstance that sets this reference apart from the others. Among our Berlin references DeepL is the only documented case where the workshop took place at the team's own workplace and not at a venue booked for the occasion. For the planning that is no detail. A booked venue brings a journey that has to suit everyone. A date in your own building brings a room you can book yourselves anyway.

What was standing there at the end

At the end there were many individual sheets instead of one large shared piece. For a photo that is less rewarding than a sprayed bus. For a site without its own surface it is the form that was possible at all.

At DeepL that was the solution. It is not the only one there is for a lack of surface, and which one suits your site is decided by a single detail: whether you have control over your rooms or not.

Frequently asked questions about this project

Does a street art workshop also work without a wall and without a yard?

Yes. At DeepL the street art workshop ran entirely in the office, at the tables of a WeWork location in Berlin, on individual A3 sheets instead of on a surface.

For the planning the difference is bigger than it looks from outside. A wall project needs a surface and the approval for exactly that surface. A table format needs tables. That decides the internal approval above all when you sit in rented rooms and cannot decide about the walls yourselves at all. So anyone enquiring with us best adds two things: how many people take part and whether a surface is available in the building or not. The format follows from these two details. The other way round rarely works, because a format that requires a wall does not simply get smaller at a site without a wall; it drops out. Saying that early saves a cancellation in the week before the date.

What is on the table at a workshop?

On the tables lay individual white A3 sheets, each fixed with masking tape. Next to them lay cutting mats and stencils cut from paper, with spray paint and markers in between.

For the room planning that is the more useful detail than a number of square metres. A workstation is as big as a sheet and the mat under it; the material stands next to it and is shared. Anyone who has ever held a meeting with laptops and papers at the same tables knows the scale. So what has to be cleared is not the surface but the number of seats you can really free up on the day of the workshop. You need that number anyway for booking the room in your own building, and from it we derive the amount of material. A second point belongs in the same preliminary check: whether the tables may stay free or are needed for something else on the same day. How much can run at the same time depends on that.