Built with contributions from around the world, the Global Nighttime Manifesto seeks to symbolise a united commitment towards creating a safer, more sustainable and equitable sector. Join us in one of our seven upcoming focus groups.

“We do it out of love. And because we love what we do, we’ll always find a way to make it work.”

– Steven Raspa (San Francisco), Stadt Nach Acht

Since May 2020, VibeLab has been working with nighttime creatives and music conference partners to create the Global Nighttime Manifesto. Through a series of focus groups, we aim to understand what values drive nighttime communities, what the future of nightlife should look like, and why fighting for our scenes is important. These insights will go towards building the Manifesto, due to be released in the coming months.

For the next round of focus groups, we are hosting discussions tailored around a particular country, region, or topic. Our goal is to amplify new voices in the global conversation on nighttime recovery, and to help create meaningful spaces where future collaborations can emerge from. With the help of passionate moderators, we have identified the following discussion topics.  

Register for the upcoming workshops: 

Complete Workshops: 

While many different communities are a part of this project, the Manifesto is only the beginning of what we hope becomes a movement of transnational collaborations. If you are unable to join any of the remaining conversations but would still like to contribute to the Manifesto, please reach out to anastasiya@vibe-lab.org.

Over the last year, we have hosted four discussions at global music conferences in São Paulo, New York, Stuttgart, and Berlin. Creatives from around the world were invited to participate, both virtually and in-person. Across these four events, roughly 45 participants representing over 30 cities in Latin America, North America, Europe, Southwest Asia, and Southeast Asia joined us.

“People in Brazil recognise the importance of Carnival beyond the partying. It’s about engaging communities, creating jobs, coming together as a diverse country. How can a similar awareness be built around nightlife outside of Carnival?”

– Anonymous, FERVO Conference

“If we want sustainable change, we need to bridge the gap between city officials and nighttime communities.”

– Hannes Götsch (Silandro), About Pop Konferenz

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What should the future of nightlife be? What values should drive our nighttime businesses, scenes and advocacy organisations? Why should we continue fighting for a better future for our communities and cities after dark?

These are the key questions driving the Global Nighttime Manifesto, a collaborative project built by and for nighttime communities around the world. Over the next few months, VibeLab is working together with creative leaders to engage their communities in conversations around the future of nightlife. The insights from these focus groups will inform the Manifesto and a series of impact indicators that aim to guide communities as they embark on advocacy, research and community-based initiatives to improve the nighttime sector. The project was inspired by the Global Nighttime Recovery Plan (GNRP), due to release its final chapter on Data and Measurement in the upcoming weeks.

The first two Manifesto focus groups were held in conjunction with FERVO Conference in São Paulo, Brazil and MONDO NYC in the United States. Across these two conversations, we spoke to participants from Brazil, the United States, Italy and Lithuania. Special thanks to Voices of Creatives local coordinator and MALAHI founder Shermine Sawalha, and GNRP contributor and NYC Nightlife United President Varghese Chacko, who helped moderate these first two conversations.

Our next focus group will be held on Saturday, 30th of October 2021 (16:15-17.15 CEST) at ABOUT POP in Stuttgart, Germany, co-moderated by GNRP contributor, creative and nightlife advocate Phuong Le and Global Nighttime Manifesto project manager Anastasiya Varenytsya. Register to join us in-person or virtually here. If you are interested in joining in-person, please also remember to purchase your conference tickets and check out other events happening that day.

Continue following VibeLab on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn to learn more about future Manifesto workshops. If you are interested in moderating a focus group discussion with members from a local or global nighttime community, please email Anastasiya at anastasiya@vibe-lab.org to discuss further details. We can help organise independent focus groups or conference workshops, ranging in topics from the future of nightlife in general to focusing in on a particular local issue.

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Club culture is informing creative ways for cities to reach more people to get tested, vaccinated and informed about the pandemic.

For many in Berlin, it is the summer of delicate hygiene concepts, sold-out open-airs and free, 20-minute rapid antigen tests that one can easily get on the way to an event. While the situation is not back to normal, Berlin’s nightlife sector has taken many strides since last year to get to this point. Last week, the city’s Clubcommission introduced two more large-scale efforts to enable a safe and responsible reopening of nightlife, further showing how the nightlife sector can be part of the solution — and not just problem — for managing the pandemic. 

On 6-8th August, around 2,000 clubgoers participated in a pilot-test study, whereby six clubs opened their indoor dancefloors for maskless, non-socially distanced clubbing. Participants, regardless of their vaccination status, were allowed into all six clubs if they passed a PCR-test administered on the Friday of that weekend. As part of the study, they were also required to take a second PCR-test the following Friday and asked to fill out two anonymous questionnaires that will be rolled out later in the month. 

The interim results for the “Clubculture Reboot” study are promising. During the first PCR-test, seven participants were caught with an infection and sent home. Almost 70% of participants got re-tested the following week, and all follow-up tests were negative. While we await for the final findings, this initiative is a good example of how nightclubs can and should be active stakeholders when working with other advocacy, government or research bodies to come up with solutions that are in the interests of their communities.

The Clubcommission also helped organise three “Vaccination Nights” during the same week, where guests could receive a free vaccine shot and stay to dance and rave. Hosted at the venue-turned-vaccination-center Arena Berlin, this event was meant to encourage more young people to get vaccinated. 

The Vaccination Nights were also meant to give back to the artists who have been working at the vaccination center. All of the DJs at the event were among the many creatives who had been employed at Arena sometime during the last six months. Due thanks to German Red Cross’ Müggelspree branch president Jens Quade, an estimated 800 of Arena’s 1000 employees come from Berlin’s arts, culture and club scenes. When looking to quickly hire a large number of people to fill up vaccination centers across the city in December 2020, he consciously turned to the creative and cultural industries to support those facing the fallouts of the pandemic.

But Berlin is not the only city to see its clubs turn into vaccination or testing centers, or its nightlife workers join the pandemic gig economy. As part of a larger national effort to increase the vaccination rates among young people in the UK, LGBTQ+ club Heaven in London administered 1,000 Covid-19 jabs over one day, followed by plans from the Ministry of Sound to do the same. That same weekend, LIV in South Beach Miami, Florida opened its doors and offered free vaccinations to a city where many unvaccinated young and middle-aged people are quickly filling up hospital beds as the delta variant spreads across the state. And in preparation for what became a 385,000-attendee festival, Lollapalooza in Chicago hosted an event in June where they offered single-day tickets to those who received a vaccine at one of four vaccination sites, which also featured DJs spinning music from Lollapalooza artists. The city of Antwerp, Belgium, too, announced this week that they plan to do the same to ensure that more young people can get vaccinated in time for the Fire Is Gold and Ampere Open Air festivals in September. 

What all of these different examples demonstrate is how nightlife venues and workers can be a part of the solution — and not just part of the problem —  for curbing the spread of the pandemic. For one, nightlife workers have unique skills to deal with people in potentially difficult and stressful situations, which can be useful in vaccination and testing sites. Venue and events operators are also practiced in the logistics of managing and moving large crowds safely. Not only do some nightclubs have the physical infrastructure to support mass-vaccination or testing efforts, but many of them, regardless of size, already have a community that trusts and respects them. By engaging nightlife venues in similar kinds of efforts as seen in the examples above, cities can creatively reach more people to get tested, vaccinated and informed about the pandemic. 

But city-wide engagement with nightlife venues and workers needs to be equitable and collaborative. They should have an active voice in shaping the projects and policies that, at the end of the day, will affect them and their communities. With the proper financial support and training, nightclubs are in a strong position to come up with creative solutions for safe, large-scale gatherings that other communities in the city can learn from as well. 

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