Once a year, a very special cultural event turns the Ruhr region into what it is often perceived to be from the outside: A Ruhr metropolis in which city boundaries no longer play a role and in which the special features of the formerly industrial region merge into one big whole.
ExtraSchicht - Night of Industrial Heritage brings the region's industrial heritage sites together for one night and offers visitors a range of cultural experiences that is unrivaled by any other event.
Festival of superlatives
ExtraSchicht is a festival of superlatives: around 500 different events take place in a single night at around 40 to 50 venues, mostly in 20 different Ruhr region locations. A good 2000 artists are involved to provide visitors with a wide variety of cultural experiences at the spectacular backdrops of the industrial cultural sites.
Guests are free to choose from this seemingly endless selection: Look at street art? Listen to the symphony orchestra? Experience improvisational theater? Or would you prefer to dance at the headphone party?
Mobile through the night
The great thing about ExtraSchicht is that there is no need to make a definitive decision. The unique concept of the Night of Industrial Culture makes it easy to move between different venues. A mobility system specially designed for ExtraSchicht takes the 150,000 to 200,000 visitors to the program items of their choice.
Normal local transport will be supplemented with 150 shuttle buses on this night. Extraschicht visitors will also be able to explore the night from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. by streetcar or historic trains, by canal boat and, of course, on foot or by bike. The festival ticket is also valid as a ticket for all means of transportation.
The magic of industrial culture
The main role of ExtraSchicht is played by the industrial cultural backdrops of the various venues. Since its premiere in 2001, ExtraSchicht has set itself the goal of eliciting the magic of concentrated industrial culture from the former sites of industrial work and making the fascinating industrial sites accessible to a wide audience.
Today, the entire Ruhr region uses facilities and wasteland on former industrial sites in a variety of ways and breathes creativity, light and color into the atmospheric locations. ExtraSchicht has often acted as an icebreaker in this field in the past: It gave spectators access to former industrial sites for the first time, thus giving the go-ahead for future cultural use. New venues are still included in the ExtraSchicht program every year.
In addition to "old hands" such as the Gasometer Oberhausen, the Zollern Colliery in Dortmund and the UNESCO World Heritage Site Zeche Zollverein in Essen, venues such as the Bergpark Lohberg in Dinslaken and the Schacht IV winding machine building in Moers now also enrich the Night of Industrial Culture.
ExtraSchicht thus unites many anchor points of the Route of Industrial Heritage, which links all the attractions of the Ruhr region's industrial heritage over 400 kilometers, in a unique summer and cultural festival and thus reflects the diversity of the Ruhr metropolis.
