“VR in Germany needs to evolve. The industry is growing and changing faster than any other. With VR slowly reaching mainstream adoption and AR maturing we cannot allow european countries like germany to fall behind.”

"With our contribution to Places 2018, we felt that our VR project and the team were in the right place. The uniqueness of the event through the effective positioning in a suitable location brought added value from our perspective."

"The Ruhr Area is an exciting region for start-ups. The industrial heart of Germany still beats here - come and make the heart beat faster!"

"Virtual Reality offers an incredible number of possibilities, especially in the field of museums and culture. Especially when it comes to knowledge transfer, a VR experience simply stays longer in the memory and thus offers real added value. We are happy that there is a Places Festival again this year, because we can present our applications to many people here."

"The creative industry repeatedly offers pioneering solutions for society, business and politics - this is nothing new, and yet it cannot be emphasized often enough and made visible with particularly successful examples: Like with the places_ Virtual Reality Festival. Here it becomes clear, what positive effects creative ideas and actors, as well as innovative technologies can have on a district, even a whole city, and thus in the long run also on the economic development of a region."

"When a colleague drew my attention to the Places _VR Festival, I thought the event was a great opportunity to develop a VR project together with students from the Faculty of Architecture at Bochum University of Applied Sciences. I approached the event with relatively low expectations and saw it as a public platform for the students to present their projects. All the more I was pleasantly surprised when a multitude of interesting networking and cooperation opportunities arose during the festival days."

The desire to create a new medium together was also evident in the Creative _ Places residency, where we lived, worked and finally developed an exhibition together for a week. Versatile initiatives like Places are, in my opinion, extremely important for the community and for the further development of XR itself. I am happy about the opportunities and projects that have arisen and will arise from the contacts of the Places and I am especially looking forward to the 2020 festival!

"Places 2020 was my second and maybe even my best. Not necessarily because our team won a category but because it felt like coming "home". That sounds a bit corny, but the feeling of coming back to the location, seeing familiar faces again and experiencing how the whole festival has developed and knowing that you were and are a small part of it, was a great experience for me personally. I will be back in 2021 and look forward to seeing new projects, collecting new ideas and meeting people who share the same passion. Of course, I'm also looking forward to the hackathon again and the 24 hours of sleep deprivation, the amounts of wakefulness you'll get into and the spontaneous ideas you'll still have at 5am and the stress of getting them in by noon."

"After receiving the award last year, we were invited to MEDICA by Andreas Pinkwart and were able to present ourselves to an international audience. It was also exciting to get to know the other innovators in the field of VR."

"The DIVR Science Award was a really great event because there were many exciting projects. It's really worth coming along!"

"The Places _ VR Festival 2020 was a highlight for me last year. Above all, it was one of the only events that took place in-person. I really enjoyed talking to and hopefully inspiring so many young people interested in XR. It also felt like a family reunion, meeting and getting to know so many creatives, artists and entrepreneurs from the XR scene. I'm looking forward to the family reunion again this year to see what's been happening with most of them and to see what projects have come out of the last edition."