When did you come to Berlin and have you always been a photographer? Sabrina: I…
Amy Phillips
An interview with the founder of Grrl Gang Berlin18 January 2022
Grrl Gang Berlin (@grrlgangberlin) is a group of like-minded people from the FLINTA* (a German language abbreviation for women, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, trans and asexual people) community.
Founded last year during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, the community provides a platform for women to meet, connect, and share. YEOJA Mag spoke with its founder, Amy Phillips about how Grrl Gang Berlin began, its evolution, and her newly opened twin project, the Lonely Hearts Cafe in Neukölln, Berlin.
Hi Amy, thank you for speaking with us today. To start with, what prompted you to begin Grrl Gang Berlin?
Amy: A few years ago, I organised a brunch on women’s day with my wife Nicola. We invited friends over to our place to see what kind of connections would come up. Connecting people is something that I’ve always been doing quite naturally within my friendship group, and I thought I could do it in a more organised way. The event ended up being really magical, and reminded me how open FLINTA* people are when they’re with each other. I wanted to do something more with this project, but I had a full time job, got married, and I just didn’t have time to [pursue it]. Then corona came, and it felt like it was a really good moment to pick up the thread of this idea I had.
The importance of community is also something that I’ve been banging on about for years. We talk a lot about self-care in our society, but I also think we’ve forgotten about the importance of community care, and that not everybody can show up for themselves in the way that this mantra of self-care encourages you to do.
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How did you start Grrl Gang Berlin?
Amy: Initially I reached out to people that had influenced my journey in Berlin, as I’ve been living here for the past 12 years. I wanted to find a way to celebrate those connections, so I took a more personal approach in the beginning and just interviewed friends. I also collaborated with a photographer friend of mine who took portraits of the friends I had interviewed. I would then publish these stories on Instagram. So in the beginning Grrl Gang was more like a documentary project. I didn’t really imagine the interactive nature of it in the beginning, it was more just me telling my story of being in Berlin through the connections that I had made.
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And with this beginning, how has the project evolved over time?
Amy: Around October last year, I created a website for Grrl Gang, where I would publish the interviews. As I had worked in digital media, it was quite easy for me to build this online space. To date we have about 2,000 members signed up via the website, which is completely crazy. Friends also began sharing the Instagram posts in their networks, and I started getting people writing to me and asking “Hey, how do you join your gang?” Nicola and I chatted about it together, and considered beginning a Slack channel, but Slack reminds a lot of people of work. Instead, we found this program called Discord, and built up the discord server from one day to the next.
Initially, we used Discord more for tips, advice, and inspiration, but as it’s really hard to make new friends in Berlin, especially with corona, I had a lot of people asking if we could provide ways for them to make new friends. So in the spring of this year, we created Grrl Gang Clubs, which is basically like when you’re at a school, or university and you join a club for things like games, music or dance. Rather than inspirational tips and advice, the focus on the Discord became more about facilitating connections; with my main hope just being that someone can go to Grrl Gang and make a friend. For me, that’s mission accomplished.
There are a variety of clubs available, such as the witchery tarot club, book club, and a skate club. Is there a most popular club or a favourite club of yours?
Amy: I love them all. It’s just so magical that we were even able to create these clubs during lockdown. A lot of the club organisers had never even met each other when they started organising the clubs together. It’s really cool how open, resourceful, and creative everyone was, and how they managed to get together and come up with all these ways to connect people.
It’s amazing that people would give up their time and energy for my project. I never would have imagined that we’d have that level of interest, but people really do care about Grrl Gang and want to build it with me together. I don’t really feel like it’s just me anymore, I feel like Grrl Gang belongs to everybody now.
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Grrl Gang offers a safe space for FLINTA*, and also has no age targets. Why is it so important for you to provide such an inclusive space?
Amy: Berlin is a very international city, but in my opinion, there’s still not a lot of conversation about how we can make spaces in Berlin safer. As a lesbian-identified woman, I’ve grown up as a queer person both in the UK and in Berlin, and have experienced what it feels like to not feel safe in a specific room or space. That’s why it’s important for me; I’ve experienced it and know what it feels like. As I’m a white woman, I haven’t even experienced the amount of difficulties that other people have, so I just try to create space — what happens in this space is up to the members.
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How do you promote inclusivity within this project?
Amy: The community guidelines and the Grrl Gang manifesto are the initial step, and we also encourage open discussion between our members, as long as it is done in a respectful way. We also share a variety of events through our Discord channels and also share pronouns at the beginning of projects and meetings.
It’s also about de-centering my own voice as much as possible, so I really try not to take up too much space. I’m aware of my own privilege, and I try to let others tell their stories through their own words. I built this platform, but it’s for anyone to share information, an event or what’s happening to them or in the world. We try to be as approachable as possible, and make a point of trying to share as many different types of voices as possible, as it’s often the people from more privileged backgrounds that put themselves forward. I also really try to encourage members, especially those who might not have come forward, to tell us what they’re up to and share their news with me.
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You also host sharing circles on topics such as friend breakups and ENBY (non-binary) experiences. What was the motivation to begin offering learning circles?
Amy: I tried to workshop some Zoom events during lockdown, and I also worked with Megan, who runs Girl Gang Manchester, who kindly shared what she had gone through building up her Girl Gang.
I had also recently quit my job, as I was tired of the marketing industry and wasn’t happy working in social media marketing anymore. So, the original sharing circle was more just for myself, as I needed to share, and I thought surely there must be other people who also need to share, and then it just went from there. People would submit topics and ideas for me and we would cover a different topic each month.
And for those who haven’t yet taken part, what happens in a learning circle?
Amy: There is usually a time limit, so there’s about five to seven minutes for each person in the circle to share whatever they want to say on the topic, without judgement. Something that I really like about the sharing circles is that the people there don’t have to respond to you. As humans, we’re not very good at active listening, as we’re often formulating a response, instead of listening whilst other people are speaking. The learning circles are a unique experience, where you can just go to a really nice, non-judgemental space and get rid of something you’ve been carrying around.
As well as running Grrrl Gang Berlin on Discord and through the website, you also have an active Grrl Gang Instagram, created a Grrl Gang zine, organise events and Instagram live discussions, and hold sharing circles for the community. It’s very impressive! How did you gain the skills needed to run Grrrl Gang Berlin at the level that you do, and what drives you to continue giving so much love, as well as time to this project?
Amy: I worked in social media marketing and online content creation for six years, and those skills were easily transferable to Grrrl Gang Berlin. What encourages me to keep going is just hearing the stories from Grrl Gang members, like when someone writes to me and tells me that they’ve made a friend, or friends, and it’s really changed their Berlin experience.
We also did a summer program of events, which was the first time that we met in person because of the lockdown. For the first meet-up, we met at the Insel der Jugend in Berlin, and it was amazing for me to see all these different people making friends and swapping numbers; who, apart from this project, had nothing else that would have connected them.
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You’ve also just opened your first cafe, Lonely Hearts in Neukölln, Berlin. You were in the marketing industry, and now you’ve got your own cafe. What was the catalyst for this jump?
Amy: The two projects are connected, as I had previously spoken about having a physical clubhouse for Grrl Gang, where we could go and meet with each other. It’s also because of conversations with Grrl Gang members that the cafe came to life, as it made me realise that urban loneliness was more of an issue than anyone could have known.
However, I didn’t want to just have a space for Grrl Gang, as it’s exclusionary to everyone else, and also doesn’t make any sense from a business perspective. My wife Nicola was also ready to move on with her career, and then her father passed away during corona. He chose to leave Nicola some property behind, and we wanted to do something with the money not just to create a new life for ourselves, but also to honour him, and create something that he would be proud of.
Before opening the cafe, we found a business coach to make sure that we could actually do it, as we didn’t have any experience, and tapped into the Grrl gang network to set up a team of freelancers that helped us build the cafe. Nicola and I got the keys in August this year, and opened in October, so it was quite a turn around.
And lastly, what are your plans for the cafe and for Grrl Gang?
Amy: At the moment, we’re just taking it one day at a time, as it’s so hard to plan anything in this corona phase that we are in right now. We have a lot of big ideas for events, and I just want to keep bringing people together, as it comes very naturally to me. There’s a quote from Dolly Parton which is, “find out what you’re good at, and do it on purpose.” I really feel like I’ve managed to do that in building this business with Nicola, by just leaning into myself and just trying to be the most me that I can be.
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To become a member of Grrl Gang Berlin, click here. To follow Grrl Gang on Instagram, click here. To follow Lonely Hearts Cafe, click here. To check out more interviews, click here.
