Count Me In! Jazzfest Community Week
As part of its community and outreach programme, Jazzfest Berlin by Berliner Festspiele is joining forces with 15 local initiatives from Moabit and students from the Jazz Institute Berlin. With neighbourhood concerts, workshops for all ages, decolonial city tours, a seminar and film screenings, they invite local communities and audiences to discover, engage and actively participate in the festival.
JIB Creative Music Workshop by Anthony Braxton - 26.10 - 30.10.2026
Anthony Braxton, one of the defining figures of contemporary avant-garde music, meets the next generation of jazz musicians. As part of a multi-day workshop, the visionary composer and multi-instrumentalist offers around 25 students from the Jazz Institute Berlin (JIB) insights into his artistic practice. The JIB Creative Music Orchestra formed during the workshop will present one of the highlights of this year’s Jazzfest Community Week with a concert at JIB’s Georg-Neumann-Saal.
DREAM BABY DREAM
60 Berlin-based participants, including children, teenagers, adults and artists from various disciplines, engage with central questions of our time through music, movement and poetry in this experimental short film.
The project was developed by a ten-member creative team in autumn 2025 and shot during the Jazzfest Community Week in Berlin.
Having premiered in Washington, D.C., in April 2026, the film has since been screened more than twenty times at music and film festivals both in Germany and abroad, winning awards along the way.
At this year’s Jazzfest Berlin, DREAM BABY DREAM opens both the Jazzfest Community Week at PAS Berlin and the concert programme at Haus der Berliner Festspiele.
Poster DREAM BABY DREAM, 2026
Jazzfest ImproLabs for Kids - 26.10–30.10.2026
This year’s ImproLabs bring together about 35 children from two primary schools at Kulturmanege Moabit and KULTURFABRIK Moabit. While one workshop, developed in cooperation with OTTO-Spielplatz, combines circus arts and interdisciplinary improvisation around the theme of time travel, a theatre lab explores chaos and order in Moabit’s urban landscape. Musician Joel Grip accompanies both ImproLabs, enriching the collaborative process with musical perspectives. The programme concludes with a performance by the two workshop groups in the circus tent, where participants share the pieces and ideas they have developed with one another, as well as with their families and friends.
Community Saturday - 31.10.2026
Jazzfest Community Week concludes with the Community Saturday, inviting audiences to a day of diverse events in Moabit. The programme beginns with the alternative city tour Entangled Histories, which has been developed by deSta – Dekoloniale Stadtführung in collaboration with Jazzfest Berlin. Taking place across several locations in the district, this two-hour tour sheds light on colonial legacies that continue to shape the present.
Following the tour, KULTURFABRIK Moabit opens its doors for a varied programme featuring the queer shadow theatre performance UNDINI Uncut, a neighbourhood session and a screening of the Oscar-nominated documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (2024). The film explores global power structures, anti-colonial struggles, and the role of jazz music in African countries during the 1960s.
NextGen - Concerts & Seminar
From Monday to Saturday, Jazzfest Berlin invites students from the Jazz Institute Berlin to perform free lunch concerts and neighbourhood sessions in Moabit, with the latter being open to anyone interested in music for active participation. Venues include a local pub, community cafés and the SOS-Kinderdorf Berlin-Moabit, an intercultural multigenerational house.
The new edition of the Artistic Leadership seminar by the Hanns Eisler School of Music offers students the opportunity to engage in dialogue with international musicians featured in this year’s festival programme. Anthony Braxton and Alexander von Schlippenbach, two seminal figures in improvised music, will be at the centre of these exchanges.
The European collaboration project Melting Pot also returns, bringing together outstanding young improvising musicians from four European cities. The project will take place as part of the monthly Carla Jam at the Jazz Institute Berlin.
Image by: Berliner Festspiele / © Fabian Schellhorn
