Marleen Kiesel
Co-Director & Co-Founder
(she/her) (de, en, fr)
Marleen Kiesel co-founded Paper Lantern Collective after helping build Germany's first Community Music programme inside a classical music institution — at Konzerthaus Dortmund, where she spent five years running year-round work in Dortmund-Nordstadt for thousands of participants. She is now PLC's Co-Director and one of the most experienced hands-on Community Musicians working in Germany.
Marleen came in through the elite institutional route and chose to leave it. She is trained as a school music teacher at the University of Würzburg, she worked at Staatsoper Hannover (2019–2021), Oper Graz, and on projects in France — developing participatory pieces, leading inclusive music theatre, building sound installations with young people — before redirecting her whole practice towards Community Music. Marleen makes art made with communities, not for them, on the communities' own terms. Her repertoire as a Community Musician spans choirs, bands, jam sessions, drum workshops, kindergarten and family projects, inclusive music groups, and youth work.
Her signature project at Konzerthaus Dortmund was the founding of a weekly singing community for people over sixty. It began with a handful of participants. It now fills the concert hall with over a hundred singers every Monday with highlight workshops alongside the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. It is one of the clearest examples in Germany of what Community Music can do when it is given time, trust, and committed artistic leadership.
Marleen is a sought-after trainer and mentor. Through the Community Music Certificate at Landesmusikakademie NRW she has supported fifteen emerging Community Musicians to deliver their first projects in cities across Germany. She teaches regularly at conferences and universities and is one of the clearest articulators in the German-speaking field of how to deliver Community Music work.
Her practice is defined by a commitment to working with participants at eye level and to building the kind of sustained local relationships that actually shift what a place feels like to live in. She is also the clearest artistic voice at PLC's ethical and creative centre — on what it means to work in depth, share authority, and treat every participant as an equal artist.