Peace out Paradise

As it happens so often, it was born out of a personal need and motivation. In 2020, Svenja moved back from Los Angeles to Berlin and wanted to continue to do pottery, but couldn’t find a studio in the style and size of the ones she got to know in LA: Where a large amount of people can comfortably potter together in a beautiful, generous community space, with many kilns that run on a daily basis and a spacious glazing room with ready-to-use glazes in large buckets. A studio like this was not to be found anywhere in Berlin - could that be? The vision was born to open up a gorgeous ceramics studio on an international scale not only for ourselves, but also for a large community in Berlin that could benefit from such a space. One of the main focuses from the very beginning was, next to a big membership area, to offer an extensive range of classes in order to bring pottery to as many people as possible. Why? Because clay has such a calming, meditative quality - something that humanity needs right now. As Svenja already opened up several businesses in the past 12 years, she was not afraid to go this route. However, as a mom of two she did not want to start this by herself, as working in a team is always more fun and improves the outcome by so much anyways. At the same time, after having worked in event production for over ten years, Verena was on the search for a new challenging and more meaningful task. Over the last years she had becoming more and more interested in how to found and develop businesses more sustainable, social and beneficial for everyone involved. There had to be an alternative to the oh so often witnessed “Start Up culture”, where the focus on a lucrative exit often becomes the main purpose of the company and their founders compared to the people or the longevity of the company.Svenja and Verena have already known each other from previous jobs and reconnected in 2021 when Svenja immediately tells Verena about her idea of opening a community ceramics studio - and boom, it’s a match! Together they start exchanging on the vision, the concept and the name, and shortly after, Peace out Paradise - or short POP - was born. As Svenja, being a ceramic artist herself, and Verena as a trained fashion designer and crafty person by nature, with both also having a professional background in communications and management, these topics were covered, but none of them knew anything about running a studio, things like kiln programming nor technical specifics. So they started looking for like minded and experienced people who would love to co-create the studio and bring in the know-how needed. That way, POP could become a well functioning, efficient and fun studio that is designed and brought to life as a community from the start. From here on, everything started moving pretty fast: The location and the right people just showed up almost magically at exactly the right time, so that the planning and executing as a community could start. Svenja and Verena see themselves rather as initiators, who are good in planning and starting things, than as founders or owners. It takes many more people to found, run and develop a good company and it is always more of a team effort than a singular one. By now there already is a whole group of amazing people involved that works on finalizing the studio, helping it to develop and grow.