Gönül Sen-Menzel: Action Painting at the Chorweiler Indoor Pool

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Nippes/Chorweiler – Indoor pools are often seen as pure sports venues where swimmers doggedly swim their lengths to improve their stamina.

“That image is no longer up to date; indoor pool visitors want to have fun,” explains Leonie Mannteuffel, who is responsible for public relations for the municipal pools. To make the indoor pools in Nippes and Chorweiler more attractive to visitors, the Sports and Pools Department, in cooperation with the health insurer “AOK”, is offering a colorful program as part of the “Fit and Fun Action Weeks”.

The action weeks opened with a big party at the Chorweiler indoor pool. After a healthy breakfast, the band “Dezibel” fired up the swimmers with lively rhythms. The divers of the Post sports club gave a top athletic performance. The four young people did tucked and layout somersaults and showed a tandem dive: a handstand flip in pairs from the three-meter board.

Art was also on offer at the opening celebration. The painter Gönül Sen captured the scene in the indoor pool with brush and waterproof paint on a six-square-meter canvas. One half of the artwork is later to be mounted inside the pool, the other half on the outside wall. Isabelle, 14, likes the picture. “But I would never paint one like that myself,” the girl admits, and jumps back into the water.

“To keep the municipal swimming pools, we need higher visitor numbers,” says Dieter Sanden, head of the Sports and Pools Department, explaining the city’s problems. In the spring of this year, six municipal pools were closed following a council decision. The money saved is now to be used to make the remaining indoor pools more attractive. 180 courses, from senior gymnastics to baby swimming, are currently offered in municipal pools. “In the action weeks we want to present these offers to the people of Cologne,” explains Manfred Kräber, head of the pools division, describing the background to the event.

Until December 10, there is a varied program every day at the indoor pools in Nippes and Chorweiler. “Perhaps a school will also be found to brighten up the eight-meter-long brown wall in the passage to the students’ changing rooms at the Chorweiler indoor pool,” Mannteuffel hopes.

Original caption: The painter Gönül Sen demonstrated “action painting” at the opening of the “Fit and Fun Action Weeks” at the Chorweiler indoor pool.