Domweih premiere in blue and orange
BLOCK makes its premiere at the ‘Domweih’ public festival in the German town of Verden to celebrate its 80th anniversary as a company.
Hello! My name is Frederic, and I’m an apprentice industrial management assistant in my first year of training at BLOCK. I took part in BLOCK’s project for the Domweih public festival, and want to give you an idea of our trainee project.
A change of gear for the Domweih festival
There is no better way of celebrating the company’s 80th anniversary than with a float at the Domweih procession in Verden. We want to celebrate our company while the town goes wild again and the streets are full of people. This is the reason why all apprentices at BLOCK launched the electrifying “Domweih 2019” as a joint project. This project was focused on two main things: firstly a presence that represents BLOCK as a company, and secondly a joint project aimed at promoting team spirit among all apprentices.
The Domweih public festival in Verden
The annual event in Verden is one of northern Germany’s oldest public festivals and dates back to the year 985. Held solely around Verden Cathedral at that time, the public festival now parades through half of the town.
The 1034th Domweih festival took place between June 1 and 6, 2019 and featured 148 exhibitors.
From idea to eye-catching display
A team of organizers made up of two apprentice industrial management assistants, an apprentice product designer, and three commercial apprentices planned and coordinated the work to construct BLOCK’s Domweih float. This involved preliminary tasks such as budget planning, creating a work schedule, and developing the design for the float. A local carpenter’s workshop in Verden was also appointed to build the attachment for the float. Working as a team and showing plenty of personal commitment, the apprentices laid the base for the float, built a platform, painted the float, and decorated it in BLOCK’s style.
I spoke with Niko Knospe, one of the two initiators.
First of all I wanted to know how the collaboration went:
“Work on the Domweih float with the individual apprentices went very smoothly. Although we all had different ideas, we soon decided on a joint concept and transformed our ideas into the end result, and we are incredibly proud of this.”
I was also interested in hearing about the response from within the company:
“Our idea received positive support from the company’s managers and executives right from the start. Among the employees the feedback was also all positive from the individual departments. We are delighted that we were able to inspire more than 60 of our colleagues to get involved in the procession.“
The Domweih public festival was a total success. We are setting a clear example with our 64 BLOCK colleagues and our decorated float. We paraded through Verden on June 1, 2019 in an exuberant mood and with loud music playing. Following BLOCK’s successful first Domweih procession it is clear that BLOCK will be back at the procession in years to come.
