Dean Ruddock was born in Paderborn in 1992 as a result of various migration movements, used to be a musician, then became a filmmaker, organizer, editor, poet and workshop leader via the poetry slam format.
Since his debut in late 2009, he has participated in several hundred poetry slams nationwide, was in the finals of the NRW Championships in 2017, took over the open reading stage Lyriker Lounge, which he successfully hosted and organized every month for seven years.
In 2014, he began giving poetry slam workshops at schools, libraries and other institutions, including with Lektora GmbH and Karsten Strack.
Since the end of 2015, he has been giving racism-critical workshops with a focus on language together with the poet Fatima Moumouni, among others for the Pädagogisches Institut München and the Antirassistische Humorfestival Zürich.
Artistically, he is particularly interested in the transfer of text into other media.
Most recently, for example, he won the audience award in the NRW competition of the 2016 ZEBRA Poetry Film Festival for his poetry film Birds on Power Lines, and in May 2017 he won the WestArt audience jury prize at the 63rd International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen for an alternative version of the film.
Last October, the dance theater piece Solange wir da sind premiered at the Pumpenhaus Münster, the text of which he developed together with the performing tricksters and dancers*innen in the project Tanzpoeten.
Dean first studied linguistics, then popular music and media at the University of Paderborn. He recently moved to Weimar to study media art and design at Bauhaus University.
Artist
Dean Ruddock
