Pop-up locations on the Frankfurt Bridges bring together people who share the same interests

There are spaces on the bridges that are made available for a wide variety of hobbies: Anyone interested can drop in and join in, without club membership or obligations. The Bridge Society opens a hobby pop-up in cooperation with clubs, enthusiasts groups or other organizations: Meetings and events are held for the respective hobby for a certain period of time - from 3 months to a maximum of one year. All kinds of hobbies are represented: Ceramic painting, history, insects, literature from all countries, mangas, Tai Chi and Yoga, painting techniques, sewing and knitting, guinea pigs and other small animals, pottery, Pokemon, robot building, chess and much more. The pop-up locations all have slightly different equipment, so some are more suited to hobbies that require space, while others need ovens or lots of sinks. When beautiful things are created as part of the hobby pop-up activities, such as intricately painted tiles or butterflies cast in resin, they are placed on buildings, walls etc. on the bridges. In this way, people successively help to design parts of the Frankfurt Bridges themselves.

Content: Spread over the bridge network there are twenty buildings, in which every few months changing hobby communities are set up.

The buildings where activities or programs for changing hobbies are offered are called "hobby pop-up" because every few months a different hobby "pops up" there. This ensures that every imaginable hobby, even the most rare or quirky ones, have a place to meet for their respective fan community.

The rooms are all spacious, pleasantly designed and equipped for different hobby focuses - whether high rooms are needed or numerous water connections or even just comfortable chairs.

The Bridge Society runs the premises with the support of its operator kiosks. Accordingly, prices to join in are limited to purely flat-rate cost prices, so that all citizens can enjoy their hobby or discover new hobbies for themselves in the pop-ups.

Drop in and join in without long term commitment

For many hobbies there are good offers that are accessible to large parts of the population: A wide variety of sports can be enjoyed in clubs, and for musical people there are choirs or orchestras that you can join. However, the prerequisite is often that you are already quite good at something - that is, you started your hobby very early in life. And whether you're good at it or not, if you don't do the hobby regularly, you lose touch.

It's different with the hobby pop-ups on the bridges: anyone who is interested can take part. The program is available on a screen outside at the hobby pop-up as well as on the Internet. For artistic activities, materials are provided and freelance artists, trainees from the craft workshops or even the Offenbach Master Academy on the bridges give guidance and participate themselves. For scientific, technical or humanities hobbies, lecturers or coaches are invited, experts from the relevant associations prepare a programme or temporarily relocate association activities to the hobby pop-up, there are discussion rounds and experiments are carried out.

Those who come to the hobby pop-up have to pay a contribution towards expenses of 4 to 8 Euros via bridge card scan or Paypal, depending on the effort and expenses required for the event. However, depending on the hobby, there are also phases where no event takes place and you can simply meet like-minded people in a hobby pop-up without any costs. For many -even very bizarre hobbies- there are clubs that can meet in the hobby pop-ups to organize activities.

The opening and supervision at the hobby pop-ups is carried out either by the duty officers of the nearest operator kiosks or by the organisers of activities who are registered with the operator kiosk and can obtain the access code from it.

There are 20 hobby pop-ups on the Frankfurt Bridges, with themes that change every six months or once a year

The topics of the hobby pop-ups are initiated by sending suggestions to the responsible department of the Bridge Society, with a detailed description of how long the pop-up should exist, what activities should be offered in the hobby pop-up, which associations, institutes, initiatives or course leaders could offer events there, which materials or equipment are needed and where they could be obtained.

In addition, it should be explained how the results of the hobby pop-up could contribute to the Frankfurt Bridges and their design. The Bridge Society then plans the calendar of events and the time and costs together with the applicants.

In addition, the Bridge Society strives to establish lasting cooperations with the Volkshochschule Frankfurt, the Frankfurt University of Applied Science and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, as well as with museums and other public cultural and educational institutions: Depending on the pop-up theme, these institutions can use the hobby pop-ups for their educational mission and/or as part of the calendar of events, as well.

The hobby pop-ups mostly have loft architecture

Loft architecture has the advantage that a lot of light enters the room through the high large windows and that the high ceilings offer space for excercise-related hobbies.

The furnishings can be completely second-hand, with wooden furniture that is as robust as possible, which can also come from the repair cafés of the Manufactory Promenade on the bridges, for example. With its shabby chic, second-hand furniture brings the vintage look that suits a loft, and it is entirely in keeping with the sustainability principle that is prevailing on the Frankfurt Bridges.

In connection with the interesting activities and the beautiful architecture of the hobby pop-ups, furnishing with second-hand furniture attain a positive connotation: You can experience live how cool and modern furnishing with second-hand furniture can be.

Limited snacks and beverages can be sold through the nearest operator kiosk, or the tea kitchens in the hobby pop-ups (or larger kitchenettes for cooking-hobbies) offer the opportunity for the organizers to allow the preparation of tea and the like.

hobby pop-up for painting: Paintings can be transferred to the load-bearing walls and pillars of Frankfurt's bridges

Almost 20 kilometers of Frankfurt's bridges are ultra-modern, and in order to make them as artistic as possible, large sections are released for painting and spraying. On the one hand, graffiti can be created there, but also street art, which comes from the hobby pop-ups.

All paintings, which are very successful, are coated in such a way that they remain permanently and can be uncovered even if they were painted over again. So everyone can let off steam artistically and the best remains. In this way, 20 km of extraordinary and fascinating art is created - whether in the Graphitti style or with other painting techniques , which are taught in the hobby pop-ups.

The hobby pop-up of insect enthusiasts: Insects can be collected, but also observed and encouraged on the Frankfurt Bridges

There is also a pop-up for somewhat bizarre hobbies from time to time: If you love insects, you can initiate a hobby pop-up where you can preserve insects, cast them in resin, or learn how to breed them.

Many butterfly species, for example, are threatened with extinction. On the wildflower meadows of the Frankfurt Bridges, however, they are given a protected habitat with food from a wide variety of plants, water from birdbaths and shrubbery or piles of leftover plants to overwinter in. Under the guidance of professionals, the insect enthusiasts in the hobby pop-ups can identify places on the bridges that are particularly suitable for butterflies and settle butterflies there.

Biotopes can also be identified or created for rare beetles, dragonflies or other insects threatened with extinction. On the wild meadows, insect hotels are already installed during the construction of the Frankfurt Bridges; but the hobby pop-up fans can sift through them together with professionals, repair, improve, renew or even add new insect hotels.

All visitors, who come to the hobby pop-ups for the first time and without any previous knowledge, can be informed how to do something for insects in their own environment or (if they have a garden) what they could design differently there to favour desired insects.

Hobby pop-ups for friends of the culinary arts are usually located on the Gourmet Promenades on the Frankfurt Bridges

In hobby pop-ups for cooking, there needs to be plenty of room for a large kitchen, as well as long tables where you can eat together the delicacies you've conjured up, and where you can sit for the preparation in advance if necessary.

Even if you are not allowed to entertain strangers, you can not only be picked up from the course by people from your own household, but you can also serve them your own cooking on arrival - which is unfortunately limited to your own cooking for reasons of hygiene, so that the results of the cooking course colleagues cannot be compared with each other by the sporadic guests.

In the hobby pop-ups with suitable premises there are also offers for hobbies to do with physical activity

Most people like to be active, but can't or don't want to take weeks of classes. That's why there is a wide range of exercise offers in the hobby pop-ups, divided into beginners, somewhat practiced, advanced:

Yoga - Pilates - Tai Chi - Swedish Gymnastics - Holistic Gymnastics - Stretching - Back Gymnastics- Occupational Therapy Exercises - Rhythmic Gymnastics - Aerobics - Standard Dance - Folk Dances - Other Dance

Like all hobby pop-ups, these are also available to the relevant Frankfurt clubs and schools or course providers for their own purposes at a favourable rental price during the times when the Bridge Society has not organised a planned event.

Hobbies such as pottery are created in the hobby pop-ups on the Manufactory Promenade, because there the professionals are right next door for queries

Ceramics created in these hobby pop-ups can be used on the Frankfurt Bridges, be it as birdbaths, as bowls on raised beds in therapy gardens for growing seedlings or as pots in the urban gardening areas on the bridges.

Naturally, it is not all great art, what amateurs make as a hobby in courses; but with a little practice and the support of artists, very beautiful vessels can also be created there, which enhance the colorful and artistic atmosphere on the bridges.

Ceramic painting on tiles is used to artistically enhance stairways of the Frankfurt Bridges

In hobby pop-ups for Ceramic Painting, citizens can paint tiles according to a rough framework, within which they can be completely creative: For example, a color palette is given from which they can choose; or the only standard specification given could be: "The tile must be completely painted, no matter what color, only black may not be used„, etc.

Artists from Frankfurt then use these tiles to create the cladding for bridge staircases and staircase stringers.

If you have painted such a tile as a citizen in a hobby pop-up, you can later find it again at a certain point on the bridge, where it will stay - permanently, forever so to speak, with a bit of luck.

In this way, the people of Frankfurt can help design the bridge, some to a greater extent, some less intensively - but everyone can join in. Because with over 400 stairways, there is enough space for many beautiful tiles.

From Magic the Gathering to Pokemon, there are hobby pop-ups for fans of the card and fantasy world, too.

Whether at tournaments, movie nights, or swap meetings to trade cards live - fans of the respective card world find many like-minded people in the hobby pop-ups every day. Since, unlike a pottery or insect pop-up, the space doesn't have to change much, two hobbies can certainly share a pop-up location during these phases. Perhaps the other card game world can attract new fans for their own community?

Similarly, hobby pop-ups for manga and anime can be held in parallel in one location and enrich each other.

Reading: a hobby pop-up topic?

You can read alone, and you can read at home. Before the days of e-books, libraries and reading cafés offered the added value of having a wider range of reading to choose from, but this has now disappeared as a motive for going somewhere to read.

Nevertheless, comfortable seating for reading should not be missing in the hobby pop-ups: You can read up on the hobby in question in the form of specialist literature, which is not usually available as e-books, anyway.

There is no hobby pop-up on the Frankfurt Bridges for reading, but there is a special reading area at the water

People like to read in pleasant surroundings, whether at home in their favourite armchair, or somewhere outdoors in a beautiful spot. Places with a view of the water are particularly popular, for example by a lake, the sea or a river.

Outside: reading area in beach chairs and view of the water

Inside: reading café with room for readings

The north arm of the Frankfurt Bridges leads over the Manufactory and Gourmet Promenade to the bathing lake in the Niddapark. However, it continues a little further to the North Market Place at the North Arm end by crossing the Nidda with a bridge.

On this bridge over the Nidda is a special reading area where you can sit down and read with a view of the Nidda: On both sides of the bridge are beach chairs, which not only protect you from the wind, but whose seating area is also lightly heated with geothermal energy. You can settle down there almost all year round, either with your own book or with a loan from the Roundhouse Reading Café, which is located in the middle of the bridge; or you can book an e-book lesson with the beach chair scan. There are also tables in the area where you can sit down to discuss a book.

And in the afternoons or evenings, readings are also sometimes held in the Roundhouse Reading Café.

User Guidance in the area of the reading beach chairs

When you sit down in one of the beach chairs, you scan your bridge card - a seat contact leads to the request to do so. After one and a half hours at the latest, you have to release your seat for five minutes before you can sit down again - otherwise the beach chair will ask you loudly to do so.

This ensures that no one sits down on the warm, beautiful spot for a whole day, and that space is always made available for new people who like to read. If you have scanned yourself in, during your hour and a half you can leave the beach chair in between and go to the toilet or get a drink in the reading café - because if someone else wants to sit in or scan in, the beach chair also grumbles, since it is calibrated to the one not yet expired bridge card - unless one has "checked out" by scan before the end of the hour and a half. Only the booking of e-book hours has to be paid to the respective publisher proportionally of the total reading time of the e-book; the stay in the beach chair, however, or reading loans from the café are free.

Between the beach chairs there are tables on both sides of the bridge where you can sit down. The tables have a topic cube in the middle, on the screen of which you can see for which book a discussion round has just been opened on that day at that table. If you log in, you can join in the discussion - either by mobile phone from the beach chair, or by mobile phone at the table itself, or even without a mobile phone, simply by talking about the book normally with other people who are also sitting at the table. It works. Even if you sometimes doubt it when you see young people sitting opposite each other and writing messages instead of talking directly to each other – there are still people willing to communicate directly with eachother without any devices . . .

Conclusion: The hobby pop-ups represent an uncomplicated access for citizens to cultural activities

Through the hobby pop-ups, one can meet like-minded people, dedicate oneself to completely new topics without entry barriers, and become temporarily culturally active without having to permanently join associations or clubs.

People have more and more free time due to shorter working hours, early retirement, a longer life span after retirement or also due to the heir-generation effect, which for some heirs ensures in the education period, already, that one does not have to work intensively on the side. In order not to have to spend most of this free time with entertainment from the internet, hobby pop-ups are a perfect alternative.

In addition, people are spending more and more time at home within their own four walls: Increased home offices eliminate the need to go to work, delivery services save people from going to restaurants, and shopping services mean they don't even need to go to stores anymore. In order for society to remain active and, above all, interactive, attractive opportunities for activity such as the hobby pop-ups on the Frankfurt Bridges must be created.

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