Background

Chemnitz has been named European Capital of Culture 2025 – a prestigious honor that puts the city in the spotlight of national and international attention. However, whether it's a social media firestorm or unforeseen events at major events, the additional visibility also increases the impact of potential crises. To prepare the city for possible threats to its reputation, we conducted a strategic workshop series with all relevant stakeholders – from the city and police to Saxon state ministries – to develop crisis communication structures.

Assignment

In this sense, our task was to prepare the city of Chemnitz, the Kulturhauptstadt gGmbH and the participating institutions comprehensively for possible crisis scenarios in the context of the “European Capital of Culture 2025” project. The aim was to ensure smooth communication and coordination processes across all authorities in the event of a crisis and to strengthen the resilience of all communication teams involved.

Idea and Implementation

In three workshops, we not only created a common basis for all participants regarding the theoretical principles of crisis communication. Together with representatives of the city of Chemnitz, the Kulturhauptstadt gGmbH, the state chancellery and other key players, we also developed a crisis communication organization for the cultural capital.

In doing so, we optimized existing reporting chains, defined possible crisis scenarios and sensitized key actors to their specific roles. At the same time, we established joint monitoring and communication structures for effective issues management. A final crisis simulation helped to test and optimize the developed processes.

Result

The targeted workshops enabled all stakeholders involved to set up a comprehensive crisis communication organization and to strengthen crisis-related cooperation between the authorities involved. The resulting structures form the basis for sustainably strengthening the reputation of the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz and safeguarding it even in critical situations.