The situation
Fotografiska is a globally recognised photography institution, founded in Stockholm in 2010. Its Berlin site — the largest in the network — opened in 2023 in a city with one of the most demanding and self-aware cultural scenes in Europe. Institutional authority cannot be imported. It has to be built, here, on this city’s specific terms.
The real problem
A new cultural institution in Berlin faces a particular challenge: the city’s creative community has a well-developed instinct for distinguishing between institutions that participate in culture and institutions that consume it for legitimacy. The question was not how to market Fotografiska to Berliners. It was how to make Fotografiska genuinely relevant to the people and networks that define what cultural relevance looks like in this city.
The work
Built the institution’s community and partnership infrastructure from pre-opening. Established long-term relationships across Berlin’s artistic, creative, publishing, and commercial communities — not as influencer partnerships, but as genuine institutional alliances with organisations and individuals whose participation would carry meaning.
Developed audience formats that activated exhibitions as entry points into broader cultural conversation — programmes designed not to serve the programme calendar but to generate sustained engagement with the institution over time.
Worked across marketing, communications, and executive leadership to ensure that cultural strategy and brand positioning operated from the same premise: that Fotografiska’s relevance depends entirely on the quality of its relationship with the city.
The outcome
An institution that, within its first two years, occupies a credible position inside Berlin’s cultural landscape — not as a new arrival attempting to integrate, but as a participant with its own point of view.