Lutz Leichsenring

Lutz Leichsenring is an entrepreneur, consultant, keynote speaker and night time economy, -culture and -community activist. He is also the founder of the Creative Footprint.
nachtausgabe.de
With the launch of nachtausgabe.de in 1999, Lutz started his nightlife professional career alongside partners Marco Herzog, Sven Schäfer, and Mirko Holzer. Funded and supported by EXIST funding programme BMWi Gründerwettbewerb Multimedia, nachtausgabe.de GmbH received 50,000 Deutsche Mark and 1st place at the n-TV Wirtschaftswoche Unternehmershow in 2001, and was a CyberChampion finalist in 2006. In 2003, nachtausgabe.de GmbH opened an office in Berlin.
Promoter and club-restaurant operator
As an event promoter and music festival organizer, Lutz produced club nights and festivals for SWR3 Radio and BigFM Radio and worked with artists like Blumentopf, and Romanthony (singer of Daft Punk). From 2002 to 2009, he created and managed the event series nach-kult-tour in the region of Karlsruhe. Lutz also works as a restaurateur and club operator. From 2004 to 2010, he was a shareholder of the Havanna Music Club at Kulturzentrum Tempel in Karlsruhe and the Lieblingsladen restaurant in Bruchsal.
Berlin Clubcommission & Berlin Musicboard
Lutz serves as Spokesman and Executive Board Member of the Clubcommission Berlin e.V. on a voluntary basis (as of 2009). Within this role, Lutz supports music and nightlife culture in Europe. In 2011, he helped initiate the MUSIK2020BERLIN campaign which resulted in the formation of the Berlin Musicboard - where Lutz is also a voluntary board member (since 2017). As Spokesman for the Clubcommission, Lutz organized awareness campaigns for the Knaack club in 2010 and Klub der Republik in 2011. He also spoke out against the German performance rights association, GEMA in 2012.
Lutz's efforts also lead the Berlin Senate to legalize commercial-free open air events in 2016. In 2017, the Berlin Clubcommission received €1 Million in funding to provide noise proofing to venues in Berlin.
East Side Gallery protests
In an effort to combat gentrification, Lutz was the spokesperson of the East Side Gallery protests alongside Roger Waters and David Hasselhoff in 2013.
IHK Berlin
Lutz serves as a voluntary member of the Creative Industry Committee of the Industrie- und Handelskammer (IHK) Berlin, Berlin's Chamber of Commerce. He was also an elected member of the general assembly of the IHK (2012-2014). In this position, Lutz initiated a working group between members of the Creative Industries Committee and the City Development Committee, to bridge the gap between interests of Real Estate companies and entrepreneurs in music and art.
Young Targets
In 2015, Lutz founded Berlin-based talent recruiting company, young targets GmbH, with Deutsche Hochschulwerbung and long-time business partner, Marco Herzog. Helping businesses attract skilled talent, young targets organizes recruitainment events like hackathons, bar camps, and escape games. young targets also collaborates with Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., CyberForum e.V. and SIBB e.V. and received the Human Resources Excellence Award (2016) for developing the first mobile escape game as a recruiting event.
Creative Footprint & VibeLab
Lutz teamed up with former Night Mayor of Amsterdam Mirik Milan in 2017 to form cultural vibrancy and night time consultancy, VibeLab. Along with Mirik and researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University, Lutz conducted the Creative Footprint Project in Berlin (2017), New York (2018), and Tokyo (2019). In 2020 Lutz initiated nighttime.org to inform how COVID-19 effects the nighttime economy globally. To re-envision urban systems to coexist with the threat of COVID-19, alongside Mirik Milan, Michael Fichman, Andreina Seijas and Diana Raiselis, Lutz was developing a global nighttime recovery plan to utilise case studies to present workable solutions for cities of many sizes, geographical and economic contexts, and the multiple models of nighttime governance.
Global Nighttime Recovery Plan
In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on nightlife, Lutz co-produced the Global Nighttime Recovery Plan with Mirik Milan for VibeLab, along with academic partners like the Fraunhofer-Instituts für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation (IAO). Within the context of this publication, he recommended that nightclubs remain closed until a long-term solution for the coronavirus pandemic emerges. The rationale behind this advice is that nightlife venues suffer greater consequences than losing revenue if they become associated with a COVID-19 outbreak. Underscoring a sense of urgency for external support to keep nightlife venues from permanently closing, Lutz pointed out that only two thirds of these spaces have enough cash flow to maintain themselves for three months. 17% of venues can only survive for one month without income.
United We Stream
As part of Lutz's work with the Berlin Clubcommission, he initiated/founded a project called United We Stream. Since music venues closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, United We Stream was set up to help nightlife spaces around the world subsidise operational costs. Within the context of the initiative, Lutz stressed the importance of maintaining nightlife culture and its impacts on the economy. He also commented on the unique time we're living in, and how United We Stream directly correlates. Illustrating the economic fallout from COVID-19 in relation to nightlife venues, Lutz says that, under normal circumstances, 30% of Berlin's tourists come strictly for nightlife. Since the pandemic put a stop to tourist activity, 9.000 jobs in Berlin are negatively impacted.
On the first day, following its launch on 19 March 2020, €100.000 was collected from over 3.000 people. Due to this response, Lutz deemed United We Stream an instant success. According to Lutz, contributing factors for the project include its website for collecting donations and established media partners like Arte Concert. As of June 2020, he cited €1.4million in donations and a viewership of 35 million for United We Stream.On 17 September 2020, Lutz accepted United We Stream's VUT Indie Award for Best New Music Business.

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