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The Community Center Needs Help! Get Involved Now

Get in touch with us!

Hello! Lilly, Jan, Katja, Victoria, Carsten, Marre... and the Volkshaus community want the Volkshaus Cotta to remain a vibrant place for everyone. To make that happen, we need your help! We’re currently working hard—figuring out how to finance the space, looking for supporters, sponsors, and backers, and planning a fundraising campaign. But we can’t do this alone! We need people to get involved—whether you have time, ideas, or just the desire to make a difference.

You can help by getting involved (e.g., with organization, finances, or research), sending us your ideas, creating something yourself, or simply stopping by to find out more. The Volkshaus should be open to everyone—and you can help shape it!

#FutureProtectedArea #NewVolkshausCotta #Together #Support #OurVolkshausWantsToLive #NVC - New Visions Cotta

#Together for Our Volkshaus—for a Connected Neighborhood #Neighborhood Needs an Open House

Get in touch with us! 📩 gerngruppe@neuesvolkshaus.de Send us a message and stop by. We look forward to seeing you!

Open Parents' Café on August 25

Building or playing from 4:00 to 7:00 p.m. in our garden

The Parents’ Café at the Neues Volkshaus Cotta takes place every other Tuesday and is a place for parents—with or without children—to get to know one another and connect. On some dates, we partner with other projects that offer advice on specific topics—but generally, the Parents’ Café is a place to network and spend time with other parents, mothers, and fathers, and it’s also a space where you’re welcome to bring your children. We have a large garden that offers plenty of space to play and run around, and we have everything you need to organize a barbecue or other activities. Just stop by and join in!

Feel free to send us your ideas at mitmachen@neuesvolkshaus.de

This program is part of the ESF Plus funding initiative.

Group Visit to the Panometer

Monday, August 17, 2026 • 3:30 p.m. at the Panometer

Our volunteers invite you to join them for a visit to the exhibition at the Panometer.

We’ll meet at the Panometer (Gasanstaltstraße 8B – 01237 Dresden)

Photo by Jeroen Komen

Open Barbecue Evening for Fathers on August 25

Discussion on Work, Family, and Career on Tuesday from 7 to 10 p.m.

Fathers from the neighborhood are warmly invited to stop by for the self-organized barbecue evenings in June. There’s plenty of space outside in front of the house to sit together and talk about everyday life. Get to know other fathers from the neighborhood and share stories. Just come and enjoy a relaxing evening in our garden.

Feel free to bring something of your own to grill.

If there’s interest, we can also take a tour of the public areas of the Neues Volkshaus Cotta together.

Funded with ESF Plus grants.

Family Movie Night

📅 Sun., Sept. 6 | 🕢 7:30 p.m.

Movie night with snacks & drinks! 🍿🥤

🎥 “Father and Son on a Trip to the Stadium”
☀️ If the weather’s nice, we’ll be outdoors.

We look forward to seeing you! 💙

Open Parent-Child Meet-Up Starts Again in September

New dates: September 8 | October 6 | November 3 from 10 to 11 a.m.

The Parents' Meetup is taking a summer break. Feel free to join us for the next sessions starting in September!

This program is open to anyone with questions about pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting during the first year. Twice a month, we offer counseling sessions led by midwives and supported by our staff, who have training in early childhood education and social pedagogy.

Unfortunately, there are stairs leading to the building—but we’re happy to help with the stroller.
If possible, please bring your chip card with you for the counseling session.

Dates:
September 8
October 6
November 3
10–11 a.m. on each date

This program is part of the ESF Plus funding initiative.

Open Call: Open West

Residency to Support Visual Artists and Collectives Working in the Social and Spatial Realm

The Neues Volkshaus Cotta and the Künstlerbund Dresden invite visual artists and collectives to a two-week residency in western Dresden.

The residency is geared toward artistic practices that are situated within social contexts and engage in dialogue with neighborhoods, places, urban spaces, and their stakeholders.

The central question is:

How can artistic practice engage with a neighborhood, its people, stories, conflicts, and everyday knowledge?

The program views art not exclusively as the production of works, but as a process of perception, encounter, and collaborative development. We are seeking approaches that are open to exchange, collective processes, and new forms of knowledge.

We are particularly interested in how artistic work can help shape social spaces, make them visible, or reexamine them.

Find more information in the blog post

Click here to apply

Click here for the call for proposals as a PDF

Join the Neighborhood Culture Working Group!

Next meeting: Tuesday, August 25, at 4 p.m.

The Neighborhood Culture Working Group is a group of people who want to get involved in the Cotta neighborhood. It focuses on urban planning and development, historic preservation, the history of the neighborhood, its people and buildings, and other topics. Together with interested Cotta residents, the working group’s members aim to connect and support existing initiatives in the neighborhood.

The working group meets regularly on the fourth Tuesday of every month at the new Volkshaus Cotta.

There is an article from March 2025 about the work of the Neighborhood Culture Working Group: https://kirchspiel-dresden-west.de/news/neue-wege-fuer-die-stadtteilkultur

Registration is strongly encouraged, as the group occasionally goes on outings: stadtteilkultur01157@gmail.com

Painting Class with Victoria Gentsch

Open creative workshop for free painting on Thursday, October 1, 2026

Starting in March, artist Victoria Gentsch will be offering a new program at our space: a place for free painting—no prior experience required. A variety of materials and paints will be available, and all participants are invited to discover new creative sides of themselves. There will be three more sessions through January 2027 to build on new skills and get to know one another. Victoria Gentsch works as a visual artist in Dresden and also has studio space here at the Neues Volkshaus Cotta.

Next session on January 14, 2027

This program is part of the ESF Plus funding initiative.

Exhibition format: "Seen like this."

99 years - history and stories about the new Volkshaus Cotta

In the period 2026-2028 is the 100th anniversary of the Volkshaus Cotta. We look forward to your help in this context! The house has been brought to life by so many people, ensembles and initiatives over the years. Every story, every picture and every document is an important part of it.

That is why we invite you: Share your memories! Whether it's a personal anecdote, an old photo or a drawing - your contributions are invaluable. Help us to preserve the stories surrounding the Volkshaus Cotta and make them visible for future generations.

Let's discover together the many facets of the former "Richard-Gärtner" district cultural center, which many of you will surely remember as the "Rote Hütte". We have collected treasures from private and public archives - from chronicles of the "Spielbrett" theater group to rediscovered photos of the reopening in 1980 and finds from the Deutsche Fotothek.

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Join in!

We would like to develop projects together with senior citizens in and around the Volkshaus Cotta to revitalize the house and garden. Together with the volunteers and project manager Yvonne, you can develop and present your personal project idea in two ideas workshops. Perhaps you will find like-minded people in the group who would like to work on an idea together.

Finally, we will support you in bringing your project to life. To do this, you can take part in our monthly meetings. The entire offer is free of charge.

Please register by e-mail with Yvonne at yvonne@konglomerat.org or at 0176-22352779

Senior citizens for Cotta

The "Senior:innen für Cotta" project, funded by the Social Welfare Office of the City of Dresden, serves as an incubator and supporter for your project idea. Here you can implement your own creative ideas or take part in artistic and craft workshops and meet new people and exchange ideas. We have the following offers in our repertoire in 2025.

> Ideas Café 60+
> The joy of singing
> Open craft and games get-together
> Repair café get-together for senior citizens with smartphone advice