This year, I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion at the ‘South by Southwest Conference and Festival – SXSW’ titled “The Transformation of Nightlife for a Sustainable Tomorrow” – how exciting!¹

But besides this exciting opportunity, besides the fact of being able to travel to Austin, to meeting interesting people and to talking on a panel; over the past years the topic grew closely to my heart.

I genuinely believe, that linking the environmental transition a lot of cities worldwide pursue, with culture and nightlife could benefit both worlds drastically. And guess what – I’m not alone!²

Good panel, good Conference, good mood – let’s go :)!

But let’s go step by step – how did this all start?

Back in the days in 2022, when I started working at Fraunhofer IAO, I took over a project called the Nighttime Innovation Network from my predecessor Jennifer: A series of workshops aimed at resolving conflicts between different interest groups in urban nights. Participants included artists, representatives of nighttime advocacy groups, public authorities (public order office), police, firefighters, security personnel, club and bar owners, and city officials, including Stuttgart’s first Night Mayor.

Due to former engagements as waiter, bartender and kitchen helper several local venues, and due to some of my volunteering activities, I had hands-on experience on how nightculture can look like from both ends. And the issues that may come with it. Now in this workshop, even my city’s first Night Mayor participated. All was pretty exciting for me!

The workshops (all online due to Covid-aftermath) followed a consistent structure: Intro done by Hendrik Meier from Vibelab³ and me, then breakout sessions in different groups, then discussion in big group. Then Hendrik and me synthesising the findings on paper.

Over time and over multiple workshop sessions together we went through identifying overarching themes and subtopics. To then be able to identify related challenges and possible solutions⁴. This process yielded a long list of possible ways forward, from which we compiled a more general and concise version in the form of policy recommendations. I could present the findings at the about pop conference on night-culture and we received a positive feedback⁵.

However, one thing stayed with me — during the discussions, also the one during the conference, it was challenging to keep myself and everyone else ‘on track’. We were constantly tempted to switch between different layers of the problem — switching seamlessly talking about individual and specific examples to the ‘bigger picture’ and general implications – back and forth. Localised and individual best-practice examples and overall policy implications were being discussed at the same time. Nevertheless, we managed it and the outcome was useful and well-received! In hindsight this experience proved to be very insightful for me.

The project finished, and sadly, no follow-up funding was secured, so in my working days the Nighttime Innovation Network was naturally replaced with other projects. But I still thought about the topic. I began reading mostly on nocturnal insects and their relationship to light ⁶ and I could get hold of the newly published book Managing Cities at Night: A Practitioner Guide (see p. 110 for explicit mention and call for action sustainability-nighttime; throughout the book only minor role)⁷.

At NOEK conference – talking about how the night is hiding in plain sight

A nocturnal Aha-Moment

It wasn’t until 2023 that I was invited to speak on a panel titled ‘The Night – The Forgotten Time in City Development’ at the NOEK Conference in Mannheim⁸. Just by reading the title, it clicked. I saw what I did not see before: All the projects I was involved with at Fraunhofer dealt with cities, and all the frameworks and initiatives within them dealt with cities, yet none of them touched on the topic of the night.

My thinking went like this:

• “Aha… day and night are roughly equal in duration, yet our projects primarily focus on daytime…”⁹
• “Hmmm, but we had the Innovation Network that happened for the night…. Wait a second… funding ran out and everybody went their way. Inside my other projects I am not asked about the topic…
• It came to me that during the Nighttime Innovation Lab, there was the exclusive participation of socioeconomic actors, without the ecological or environmental view present. The topics are covered only in parallel – either the ecological/sustainable city’s perspective or the nocturnal-socioeconomics side..¹⁰”
• All the discussions I had with colleagues and friends on the topic came back to me, wow!
• And attending NOEK reinforced my understanding, how common this theme is

Morgenstadt Twilight Innovations – Moving forward and trying to find a way

Happy times at SXSW, Photo shot by Andrea Escobar

In the aftermath of this conference I intensified my reading with the texts by Kevin J. Gaston, Vibelab and Jordi Nofre.

And then – it was all magic – I reached out to Lutz and to Jordi, I enthusiastically travelled to SXSW, met many like-minded people, and experienced many new ‘click’ moments. One statement from the panel by Lutz resonated with me: That due to rising temperatures, urban life will likely shift towards the evening and night, making the topic ever more crucial to address.¹¹

I thought to myself: “Well – how more important can it all get?!”

As 2024 goes on, with the help of my supervisors we could set-up a consortium on green soundproofing and start with the development of the ‘Industry Network -Smart City @ Night-‘. Several other ideas are in the pipeline and I’d be so happy to share and possibly get -you, reading this text- on board :).

I will continue with the concepts we came up with in my next blog post – Thanks for reading; btw – this is my first blogpost, yay!

1. Thanks to my sponsors allowing me to participate at SXSW – Lutz and Vibelab for the invitation and the ongoing inspiring discussions. And to The German Center for Research and Innovation New York for the financial support. See also description of our panel. ↩
2. First and foremost Lutz from Vibelab. As well Jordi Nofre who replied my mails and took time talking to me. Jordi’s research helped me a lot in understanding the topic better. E.g.: “The Urban Ecological Transition and the Future of Europe’s Nightlife Industry” (2023),doi: 10.1080/16078055.2022.2162112; Side note: I couldn’t find Jordi’s Article on Sci-hub.That’s why I reached out to him and that’s why we are in touch until today. Sometimes barriers can create connections :)…. Also Kevin J. Gaston’s work helped me very much, e.g.: “The Nocturnal Problem Revisited” (2019), doi: 10.1086/702250 and “Anthropogenic Changes to the Nighttime Environment” (2023), doi: 10.1093/biosci/biad017; ↩
3. Hendrik was Germany’s first publicly elected night-mayor. He was working in the city of Mannheim. A nice place. At the time of the workshop he was affiliated with Vibelab. ↩
4. See the slides. ↩
5. about pop conference and festival Stuttgart. A special thank-you to Stuttgart’s first night mayor Nils Runge for saving us a spot in the agenda for our discussions. ↩
6. See this recent paper: Fabian, S.T., Sondhi, Y., Allen, P.E. et al. Why flying insects gather at artificial light. Nat Commun 15, 689 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-44785-3. ↩
7. Book, released just in the right time for me: Acuto, Michele, et al. Managing Cities at Night: A Practitioner Guide to the Urban Governance of the Night-Time Economy. 1st ed., Bristol University Press, 2022. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv22jnkcq. (see p. 110 for explicit mention and call for action sustainability-nighttime; throughout the book only minor role) ↩
8. By happy coincidence – initially my supervisor was invited to go but hat a conflicting event. Link to NOEK Conference Mannheim. ↩
9. Writing this makes me feel kinda silly – this is all so obvious, right?! ↩
10. please note: This is simplified and reflecting my personal journey. I am trying to target the bigger picture with my argument and I do not want to discredit initiatives that already move in this and in bridging both worlds. What I personally observed is that in this context, topics related to sustainability are often approached from the cultural/societal sphere’s vision and concept, not as someone from the ecological or city-development sphere might frame them. This goes vice-versa. I vividly remember a discussion between an lighting-experienced ecologist and a cultural/societal night-time advocate, where finding common ground was extremely difficult. ↩
11. You can already see this happening in the real world. See an article from September 9, 2023 in the Washington Post – “Extreme heat is forcing America’s farmers to go nocturnal”(paywall). ↩

The post My personal Night-Shift: Finding Out about the Importance of a Topic appeared first on NIGHTTIME.ORG.

At the bi-yearly Berlin conference Stadt Nacht Acht, we explored possibilities for safer cities and examined the inspiration that can be drawn from clubs for urban safety. In the panel hosted by VibeLab this year, the moderator role belonged to a Writer and a DJ, Anjali Parshar-Savoie. 

As for panellists, we were joined by VibeLab‘s lead researcher, Diana Raiselis, Amsterdam’s Hosts Coordinator, Nourdin Zobair, and Bristol’s Night Time Economy Advisor, Carly Heath. 

The main aim of the debate was to think of ways to ensure better safety for our cities at night outside of the clubs and venues. What lessons can we learn from club cultures operating at night and being deeply involved in community well-being, and how can city councils and officials integrate their methods and enthusiasm?

Buddies that are ready to help you

Nourdin Zobair, the coordinator of Hosts from Amsterdam, introduced their project, where young people cruise the city and use a friendly approach to handle minor issues and disturbances on the streets, similar to the awareness teams or night managers in clubs.

“Hosts act as a link between the police, the city, and law enforcement. They are individuals like you, without uniforms and with a smile on their faces. They roam the streets at night, observing anything that might raise concern. When they notice something, they kindly approach you, ask you about your night, and then advise you on what to do or not. People respond positively to them because they see them not as troublemakers but as buddies trying to prevent potential trouble with the police.”

 Explained Nourdin. 

Since the Hosts project was first introduced in Amsterdam, criminality has significantly decreased, resulting in fewer police interventions and overall happier cities. Hosts guide you through the night, intervening when necessary but offering help or support when needed. Hosts project is a great demonstration that is adopting the night management and awareness approaches from clubs can bring your city a positive change.

Pamphlet dance culture lives on in Bristol. 

Carly Heath from Bristol shared another interesting approach her city adopted from the dance subculture. Pamphlets, posters, and flyers used to be the primary communication channels within the club cultures worldwide, and they worked well. Similarly, with the same efficiency, House rules written on the wall proved to be an effective way to protect our communities from outside and within. 

Bristol took inspiration from these cultural artefacts to make the whole city feel safer and not just independent venues.

 “We were concerned about opening nightlife again after 18 months of Covid and wanted to do it safely. So we created this poster campaign called “Bristol rules”, which is simple. It worked amazingly, and it was well-adapted. University parties, for example, used the agreement to the rules as a condition on buying tickets,”

Carly explained.

People liked what Bristol did, only briefly after other campaigns inspired by club culture raised in the city. Glowing murals on the wall informing you that what is unwanted is wrong or posters reminding you just to look out for your buddy became part of the Bristol urban space. 

The post Stadt Nacht Acht: What can cities learn from clubs about safety? appeared first on NIGHTTIME.ORG.

We identified what problems researchers face today and what can be done to solve them.

This year’s conference, Stadt nacht Acht, brought up new challenges and topics that club culture deals with today. We, VibeLab, hosted a panel that uncovered what barriers researchers have when it comes to data collection in nighttime research and what can be collectively done to pave the path for future generations.

Pioneering EU standard for nighttime research

To discuss the research challenges we face today, we invited Audrey Guerre, the coordinator of Live DMA; UCL academic Alessio Koliulis; Klaus Goldhammer, Managing Director at Goldmedia GmbH; and Marion Roberts, an academic from the University of Westminster. 

During a session moderated by Lutz Leichsenring, we delved into the struggles inherent in quantitative research, often characterized by its high expense and time-consuming nature. We also discussed what could be done on a European level to make this exploration more accessible. 

Speakers highlighted the need for more crucial public data on cultural segments and the prevailing biases within the available data. This often leads researchers to seek out this information or create new categories to complete their original research. But this pressure on researchers can go both ways and bring unique possibilities or chaos. 

Seeking for nonexisting data can go both ways.

“We did something that has not been done before, and in the Creative Footprint study, we were not just looking into nighttime venues with the available data. We went into the neighbourhoods and spaces, mapped them, and looked into what was happening inside. Looking into these data now, we see fascinating phenomena. There is a correlation between well-educated young people, public transportation, and music venues. If you want to be a city of the future and well-educated people, you must have good public transportation and nighttime venues,” said Leichesenring.

Guerre, on the other hand, contributed to the discussion with another point of view. 

“The problem, for example, is that the venues are not necessarily listed in the same categories from one country to another at the national level. So, when conducting research, you don’t know that this data category includes everyone you need to include. For instance, we don’t even have a definition of a live venue,” said Audrey Guerre. 

“It’s a game of influence. Sometimes, you find out that the indicators you initially created in your report are used by someone else but not necessarily correctly. For example, in one of our studies, we classified what a small, medium, and large venue is.

What we also do, is that we often advocate on the EU level for supporting tiny music venues. They once issued a funding call for small venues, and the criteria for what a small venue is were taken from our report. But the indicator was making sense only in our report, not for the funding call,” continues Guerre in another take on what collecting data that were never collected can cause. 

Speakers agreed that standardisation of data, criteria, and categories at the European level could significantly benefit researchers and cultural institutions because this standardisation would offer a more cohesive and reliable framework for analysis and possible decision-making.

Interested in finding out more about Pioneering an EU Standard for Nightlife? Register here

The post Stadt Nacht Acht: Pioneering new standards for nightlife research appeared first on NIGHTTIME.ORG.

Event Review:

Last month’s Nighttime Lab program at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin was a resounding success, showcasing the efforts of cultural producers to preserve independent culture in the face of rapid real-estate development and expanding displacement in the city.

From online radio stations to regionally focused record labels, clubs, intimate warehouses, and renegade-style events, these spaces and parties provide essential community connections and platforms for the expression of the diverse cultures that call Austin home. These spaces and communities innovate Austin as much as the tech startup down the street and provide the essential social infrastructure that often centres marginalized communities.

The program was made possible by the collaborative efforts of the German Center for Research and Innovation (DWIH) New York, German Haus, and Resident Advisor who partnered with us at VibeLab to bring the Nighttime Lab to life.

The City of Austin, developers, residents, and platforms like SXSW benefit greatly from the presence of these spaces and groups to “keep Austin weird,” a slogan that has become synonymous with the city’s unique culture. However, the increasing pace of development threatens to make this statement a thing of the past, which is why Austin’s leadership must connect with grassroots groups to find ways to preserve these spaces and provide resources for their operations and community safety/accessibility. By doing so, Austin can continue to thrive as a diverse cultural destination, keeping the city attractive, unique, inclusive, and economically sustainable for all its residents and visitors.

KEYNOTE
4:00 – 5:00 pm
The continuous rise of Nighttime Governance, and why it matters

How do communities & government work together to make a better city? This session platforms a series of keynote presentations highlighting examples of Nighttime Advocacy from around the world and in Texas that have made a difference.

We kicked off with introductions from the curator Lauren Goshinski, SXSW Music Programmer Charles Moon and VibeLab’s Co-Founders Lutz and Mirik

Followed by presentations from:

Roundtables
5:30-7.00 pm
Saving Space for Diverse Club Culture in Austin

Austin is known as the “live music capital” of the US. In this roundtable, we ask, “But for whom”? Local organizers shared more about the diverse club & dance music scenes that call Austin home and how we can support them.

Healthy music scenes and Urban Planning go hand-in-hand. How can we build a city overflowing with music and culture?

In this playful, hands-on workshop set to bumpin’ tunes, we invited everyone to co-create a future Austin, facilitated by award-winning community planners James Rojas & John Kamp.

including Mitch Lamon (Freq System), Morgan Morgan (NRX Nightride Experience)

Drinks
8.30 pm- 9 pm
Mentor Match Happy Hour

This was a unique opportunity to share a drink and chat during our happy hour to make a new connection, with music from DJ Shani.

How do I get involved?

Interested in attending or speaking at future Nighttime Lab events? Email jess@vibe-lab.org

The post VibeLab’s Nighttime Lab at SXSW spotlit Austin’s independent scene. appeared first on NIGHTTIME.ORG.