Holger Jan Schmidt

Holger is one of Europe’s leading networkers in the music festival branch with a focus on sustainability and social responsibility. He leads the pan-european think tank GO Group (Green Operations Europe) and works as anchorman of YOUROPE, the European Festival Association. Holger is ambassador and project manager of the international Take A Stand initiative and campaign for the (live) music sector, which was launched in 2017 to create a movement encouraging social cohesion in our society as
well as promoting awareness and tolerance.

Holger looks back at more than twenty years working at Germany’s biggest admission-free festival RhEINKULTUR in Bonn with a daily audience of 160.000, being in a leading position from 1998 until the festival’s last edition in 2011. Today Holger is a booker, consultant and part of the management teams of various festivals among those DAS FEST in Karlsruhe
and SUPERBLOOM Festival in Munich.

Holger is the cp-author of the book „stay SOUND & CHECK yourself“ dealing with stress and mental health in the live music, festival and event indistry and Holger co-wrote the „Sounds For Nature guidlines for environmentally friendly events“.

He holds a diploma in media economics from RheinischeFachhochschule Cologne and was a lecturer for “Sustainable Festival- and Eventmanagement” at Hochschule Fresenius (Fresenius University of Applied Sciences) in Cologne and Düsseldorf. Also he is an active musician himself.

BN*PD – Bonn Promotion Dept.

Holger founded the company BN*PD with his dear colleague and good friend Sabine Funk in 2003. They decided to take the step into self-employment and dedicated themselves mainly to the organization and production of the RhEINKUTUR Festival as well as other projects in the live music and festival industry.

Holger has been running BN*PD as a sole proprietorship since 2016 – still closely associated with Sabine and his former RhEINKULTUR colleagues at IBIT (International Education and Training Center for Event Security) under one roof in their shared office in Bonn’s Tapetenfabrik.