By Carla-Isabella Dunger
I meet Miri, Amba, and Bea (they requested that only their first names be used) from MAMBA Berlin at the SEVEN Community Record Store, where Hinterhaus lives.
Sitting outside in the sun, it feels far from where they’re often found. We’re next to no queue, no heavy bass, no long line of guests. It’s a quiet space outside a shop in Berlin-Mitte.
For most club-goers, the experience of the door is fast: a look, a question, a stamp, and, sometimes, a no. But for these three people, the door is the first place where a party’s values become visible, and it is where they thrive.
Miri and Amba are co-founders of MAMBA Berlin, and together with Bea, the organization’s Awareness Lead, they are three voices representing a much larger team: MAMBA Berlin is a BIPOC-led collective of around 30 people working across selection, awareness, and artist care.
Amba starts by clarifying terms:
“I’m honestly not a fan of the word ‘selection.’ It has a negative charge, and it’s exclusionary. We say ‘guest management.’ We manage guests, manage the queue, and speak for our values, and state the values we want people to bring inside with them.”
– Amba
We return to the concept of the door many times over our conversation. It’s where everything we talk about comes together: care, power, instinct, professionalism, and the question of who holds authority in club culture.
How did MAMBA Berlin start?
MAMBA Berlin was founded a year ago by Miri and Amba. Bea came on later as the Awareness lead.
All three bring years of club work with them: Miri through security and guest management, Amba through social media and artist care, and Bea through awareness and as a bouncer.
It all started at Freak de l’Afrique, an Afro- and Black-led collective where Miri worked the door and where Amba handled social media.
“Seeing Miri working the door genuinely meant a lot to me. I grew up in Bavaria, where there are barely any women working the door, let alone Black people who aren’t just doing security but actually shaping the space.”
– Amba
Amba says, “The first time we worked the door together, it just worked so well. We had the same vibe, made similar decisions, and barely had to explain ourselves to each other.”
After that, their paths kept crossing until one day, after an event, they were at a bar together and ended up talking for hours, mostly bout their work and the gaps they saw in the scene.
“At some point, I went to the bathroom,” Amba says, “and it hit me: I want to build something with her. When I came back, Miri said, ‘Should we start something together?’ I was completely thrown. That is exactly what I’d been thinking.”
That’s how MAMBA Berlin was born. Door work was an obvious starting point, then artist care and awareness followed.
“I saw situations where Black people affected by discrimination were only supported by white awareness teams,” Amba says. “Other Black people in the room could offer emotional support, but they didn’t have the position to do the actual care work. That made it clear how important representation was.”
For the awareness side, MAMBA Berlin wanted someone who could professionalize that area through lived experience. “We immediately thought of Bea,” Amba says.
Some people might not see how door selection, artist care, and awareness go together. Can you explain?
“All three are forms of care work,” says Bea. “Take artist care as an example. Guests might not see that part of the work, but it shapes the experience for the artist, and by extension, for everyone in the room.”
Bea goes on: “Honestly, I’m as uneasy with the word selection as Amba is. I’d rather just call it care work. We’re looking out for each other.”
“Community rules matter, but they must be lived. That means addressing conflict, discrimination, and sexual violence. Consent, accountability, conflict resolution, these are the tools, and they don’t just belong to the awareness team. They belong to the whole team, to everyone making a party.”
– Bea
Amba describes how MAMBA Berlin works in practical terms: The door team talks to artists before those working in artist care come and pick them up. And the awareness team needs to stay in contact with security, the bar, and shift management.
“These jobs require everyone to communicate with the club,” she says. “Even though they’re three different areas, you all end up working closely together.”
What do you do beyond nightlife?
MAMBA Berlin starts at the door but doesn’t stop there.
“It’s important to us to not just start a company but also build a community,” says Miri. “To ask: what does our community actually need?”
Sometimes the answer is an awareness workshop. Sometimes it needs a panel on Black creatives in club culture.
And sometimes, just a group run.
Miri brought group running into MAMBA Berlin after people from the team started asking if they could join her. “Being able to bring that into my work gives me so much back.”
In club culture, authority can grow toxic. Club-goers are accustomed to mean and judgmental door workers. How do you keep authority kind?
Amba answers this one: “One reason we founded MAMBA Berlin was that access to working in club culture depends on personal networks. Some people who are qualified just can’t get in. The industry is bent against women. So we try to create a network of relationships.”
MAMBA Berlin especially wants to help marginalized people, who are too often denied access. “This isn’t something where you do a ten-week course, and then you’ve got it,” says Bea. “It’s lived experience, empathy, discipline, things you carry with you and that you build through doing.”
“I think it’s important, because we’re helping shape the next generation of club workers and giving them the chance not just to work with us but to shape the scene long-term.”
– Bea
Bea goes on: “Especially female-read bodies, queer-read bodies, these people consistently don’t get access to working in these positions because society says big, imposing men are the ones who you place outside a club, like soldiers outside a fort. But queer people and femmes can keep us safe, too.”
Miri recounts her early years in club culture: “At the door, it was almost always white men. Standing there as a Black woman on your own is hard. I had to keep proving myself.”
“I felt like I had to appear stronger than my coworkers, tougher, more composed, more resilient. Especially as a Black woman working the door, I had to learn how to take up space and hold my ground.”
– Miri
As someone now working the door with MAMBA Berlin, Bea tells me: “When you work the door, you can be firm and still be kind. You don’t have to be threatening.”
Amba recounts situations where her authority simply wasn’t accepted: “I was at the door, I’ve told someone no, and they’re not taking me seriously. My word as a Black woman was totally overridden. The person talked past me to the male security person standing next to me.”
Miri says, “It makes a difference when you’re the only Black woman at the door versus when there’s a whole diverse team with you.”
This is partly why MAMBA Berlin exists: so women and POC working the door are not standing alone.
Amba nods at this and says:
“The old structures are still very much there, which makes it even more important to have allies in the team, people who, despite their privileges, have your back.”
“We’re encouraging people who look like us, who come from circumstances like ours, and telling them, hey, you can do this, you’re good enough.”
– Bea
What is the long-term goal of MAMBA Berlin?
They seem to think about this a bit. Then, Amba says, “People keep booking us without knowing what they’re booking. That’s a little frustrating, but it’s also an opening.”
Bea: “It’s important that the people in positions of power put in the work, put in the money, put in the time, and sit with the discomfort.”
Bea’s vision goes even further:
“I think the vision is that we eventually, as a subcultural community, look out for each other well enough that we don’t need awareness teams anymore. Because ultimately, awareness work is care work that’s been outsourced.”
– Bea
Until then, the nightlife scene needs education, community work, and more people to take responsibility.
How does a care team take care of itself?
Miri remembers earlier years. “I had some genuinely difficult nights at the door. You just had to deal with it on your own. There was no space to process it.”
Through MAMBA Berlin, that space is something they’re actively working to build—through debriefs, feedback, and regular meetings.
“Mental health for everyone on the team is really important for us,” Amba says. And it’s key that everyone takes breaks. “Our clubs are often completely empty during the week. Why aren’t they more often used for our community so we can debrief or just take a breather?”
Can you tell if your work is making an impact?
Miri says: “This last year, people came together who knew what we had done, what struggles we had faced, and what went well and what didn’t,” she says. “Then to hear people close to us say, ‘You can be really proud of yourselves, what you did this year is major,’ that feels really powerful.”
For Bea, the impact got real when close friends of the team came to a party where MAMBA Berlin was working and felt something was different.
“A friend came to a party and told me how alive people were, how friendly. They felt the difference. They noticed the ways the staff talked to each other and the way they behaved with guests. The impact is real.”
– Bea
Amba: “When we started, we weren’t fully aware of the scale of the work. As the process goes on, we realized: okay, there’s still so much to do.”
“We’re not just empowering our team,” says Bea. “We’re making room for Afrodiasporic people to have a home again in club culture.”
Bea reflects more on that history: “We stand on the shoulders of our siblings who have been doing this work for so long, and we’re opening the doors wide again. And that’s the mission: Opening the gate for more and more people.”
Follow MAMBA Berlin on Instagram.
Carla-Isabella Dunger is a writer at Hinterhaus, a subculture worker, and an aspiring music and culture journalist whose work centers on FLINTA* visibility within the scene. She is co-founder of the FLINTA* Roundtable, organizes events at Golden Pudel Club, and is also active as a DJ.
This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Words: Carla-Isabella Dunger
Edits: Alexander Cheves
Images: Mara Menzel + images courtesy of MAMBA Berlin
