Bochum Go-Club recommends other clubs and players worldwide to Go-PublicOn the background of the upcoming
Iwamoto-Awards which are given to European projects that aim to promote Go, the Bochum Go-Club made its own contribution with the project “Go-Public”. As the name implies it is a project to bring Go to the public. Go is mostly played in clubs or in front of the computer so that it is hidden from the view of the public. Therefore, we encourage Go players worldwide to organise themselves and go out to show their passion for Go. On the following page you can find a full description of how this can be realised:
http://www.go-centre.nl/tikiwiki/GopublicHere is our personal experience of going public in the city center of Bochum which took place on the 14th of April. The designed route for our promotional walk through the city can be seen in
this map.:
We trusted in the weather forecast and met at noontime in the main station of Bochum. Around 15 players gathered and while waiting there for the players to arrive, people already took interest in our go boards and some came to ask what we were doing. When we started to leave the main station the sun came out and it felt warm although we had around 13 degrees. It was fun to walk as a group with each of us carrying one go board and sure attracting the views of people.
We walked to a nearby public place which was our first stop and put blankets to the ground on which we then put our boards to play. On the borders of the blankets we placed flyers so that interested people could directly take a flyer without having to ask us and in case that people asked us we could easily hand them out. To our positive expectations a lot of people stopped wondering what we were doing and also a lot of flyers were taken as well as people sitting down with us and getting explanations. We stayed on the first place for two hours until we moved to our next stop.
The next stop was the main shopping street of Bochum where we found a nice spot to attract the views of pedestrians. We also received positive replies by the public but couldn't stay too long since the rain started. As we were invited to be visiting a book store on our route later, we decided to go there earlier and it was ok since they had everything prepared for us. They had set up tables and put advertisement for us which was really impressive and kind.
Feeling wet and cold due to the rain we enjoyed to sit down in the book store and get some rest while playing in warm atmosphere. It is the biggest book store in Bochum, that's why many people passed and stopped to see what we were doing. The book store even made announcements via speakers to make everyone inside the store aware that we are showing Go and that everyone is invited to join us. It was such a good feeling to hear it and made all of us happy.
During the day a lot of people who never heard of Go, but also people who had once played or heard of the game, showed their interest. We might have also created a new link to the Korean community in this area while one Korean woman came towards us and told us that she knows many Korean people who are looking for Go players but were not aware that there is such an active community in Germany.
We finished the day in a nice bar where we ate and drank together to discuss the day and play more Go. I'm happy to say that the project was very successful and that even players from cities like Bonn and Düsseldorf came to support us. Already during the day players asked to repeat the project in Bochum and if possible also in other cities. I am looking forward to it and can recommend this project for no matter which city or country as it is so easy to implement.
Pictures of Go-Public in Bochum +
more picturesBest regards,