This is a follow-up to my last blog entry “My personal Night-Shift: Finding Out about the Importance of a Topic“, where I outlined my personal journey towards understanding the significance of the night and culture in urban development.

Introduction: The Night – The Forgotten Time in City Development

I spend most of my working time on projects on sustainable city development. When I bring up the topic of the urban night in this professional context, I often encounter similar reactions: Either a grin or a confused look. A reaction that seems to ask, “this is a fun topic, but what exactly is the connection to what we’re doing here?“. Being in a professional context, I have the impression people want talk about professional topics. And these reactions suggest a perception that the night is not one of them; maybe a topic more for leisure, relaxation or socialising and distinct from ‘serious’ urban issues.¹

Much like in my previous blogpost, I want to challenge this notion with a bold claim: What if the after-work hours are precisely when we can best address some of the most pressing urban challenges?²

With insights from my colleagues at Fraunhofer, vibelab, and beyond, I’ve shaped my thoughts around this idea. This blog post will explore those around three core thoughts:

Cosequently, could it be, that the disconnect between after-work life and the sustainable city development agenda is a major factor of what’s slowing our progress towards major urban transitions?⁶

To tackle the global challenges we face, we need creativity and the cognitive ability to break away from old patterns – qualities that are often more accessible in the after working hours, when we can easier move away from the constraints of formal professional settings².

The underlying reasons sustainable/green city development and cultural engagement/nightlife aren’t already central to mainstream urban planning are similar: Difficulties in attributing the benefits they provide for society as a whole in economic terms.^3 4 5 If the underlying reasons why they are overlooked resemble each other, overlaps should be able to be identified; and consequently ameliorating one sphere could inform and enhance the other simultaneously. Therefore, synergies between the two should exist and could be actively developed and used.

The Night: Why Is It Underrepresented?

The figure below summarises the key points drawn from the publications I read in the process of getting acquainted with the overall topic of nighttime socioeconomics and nighttime ecology. The mentioned arguments made a lasting impression on me and I tried summarising their essence in the following (see footnotes)⁷.

Nocturnal Ecology and Nocturnal Socioeconomics opposed

What literature says:

Societal Perspective^1 6 8 9 : What struck me most was a frequently described and seemingly common pattern among urban planners, policymakers, and researchers alike: Most prefer daytime for their professional activities, often neglecting night-time considerations once their workday ends.

Ecological Perspective^{4 9 10 5 11}: Interestingly, to me, most of the key observations in articles from this context could be applied to both ecological and socioeconomic aspects of nighttime. I added the possible relevance for the socioeconomic sector in brackets behind the original arguments I took from my ecological readings:

• Nighttime plays a critical role in ecological balance, analogous to its importance during daytime, yet it remains a niche area of research. (Undoubtly this is true for the societal sphere as well. I’d argue (night-)culture plays a critical role in societal balance. In the societal sphere there is a large advocacy movement on all levels of governance. Yet the topic itself is still far from being part of mainstream city development).
• Its significance is frequently underestimated, leading to its underrepresentation in ecological considerations (…and in urban planning discussions).
• The preference among ecologists to work during daytime contributes to the scarcity of focus on nocturnal studies. (Just like their counterparts in urban planning).

The Challenge with Economics and Economic Metrics

Like in any sector, economic considerations are a driving factor (if not THE driving factor) cities are fundamentally influenced by. Like the economy as a whole, cities aim to create an economically sound and thriving environment for their inhabitants and economic actors. Which itself ultimately underlies all subsequent activities. However, this economic focus often is a difficult fit with both cultural and ecological initiatives. Let me give you two illustrative examples:

Socioeconomic Aspects: Prevailing Informality⁹

• During almost all of my side gigs while studying and working in hospitality/nightlife, I received my wage payment in cash. These transactions never made it into official economic statistics or tax-related key performance indicators (KPIs). This situation reflects a broader reality: A significant portion of nighttime economy is informally managed, often out of necessity due to stringent regulations. It is therefore not fully represented in financial KPIs of a city. Simply increasing enforcement, such as deploying more tax officers, is not a practical solution.

Ecological Considerations: The Parking Spot Problem^10 5 11

• Think about the lifecycle of a typical urban parking spot. Initially, there’s a one-time investment to pave the area. Install a parking meter, and the city enjoys a steady inflow of cash from users. Favourable budgeting no-brainer!
• Now, replace that parking spot with a public garden or a tree. While the initial costs might be similar for removing asphalt and planting, the ongoing expenses for maintenance like gardening and watering present a less appealing economic case under traditional city budgeting models¹². Despite numerous studies showing the financial and social benefits of greener urban spaces, widespread adoption remains limited without public intervention.

In a Nutshell: Qualitative Aspects outweigh Monetary Benefits

There’s a reason, why the above mentioned economic metrics are ever so popular: Simplicity. City administrators, planners, politicians, and executives often operate under tight deadlines, needing to make swift but far-reaching decisions. They rely on clear, quantitative data to inform and justify their decisions (in the best case displayed (visually on e.g. dashboards)⁸).

Integrating new frameworks of calculus, that integrate e.g. the environment⁵, requires extra effort: Data collection, harmonisation, staff training, IT infrastructure etc. So, why not stick with simpler, straightforward metrics?

But to me, could not the viewpoint and angle be a difficult fit from a start:

What if the non-monetary benefits that both culture and nature bring to urban environments significantly outweigh their economic benefits? Imagine the value of spending time with friends under a leafy tree outside a charming café, or the lasting memories created from a night out at a lively bar or club. How do we quantify these experiences? For those of us reflecting on our youth, how significant are these memories for you?

Yet, either way you turn it: In the real world as of now, there’s no escaping economic metrics. They underlie all subsequent activities. Even if economic benefits are not the target of the things you try to set in motion through cultural and green city development.

But change comes gradually. And we may try being a part of it :)…

The Missing Link

Through my experiences in both sustainability and socioeconomic sectors of city development, including my role at the Nighttime Innovation Network at Fraunhofer since 2022, I have observed a critical gap in how these two spheres intersect and influence city planning. Let me give you my main observations in concise bullet points:

• Large-Scale Integration Lacking – There is a notable absence of a systematic, large-scale linkage between ecological sustainability and the socioeconomic aspects of the after-work time. Each sphere often attempts to address problems related to sustainability based on its own understanding, without substantial cross-disciplinary collaboration. The link yet has to be made in an systematic way on large scale (e.g. in the multilateral sustainable city development my employer Fraunhofer and the Department of Urban Systems Engineering pursues)¹³.

• Small-Scale Conflict Mediation Dominates – In the realm of nightlife and socioeconomics, the focus often remains on resolving immediate, localised conflicts (e.g., between a bar, a restaurant and its neighbourhood) rather than fostering broader synergies that could benefit the city as a whole. Again, because the link mentioned above is seldom systematically made.
• Focus on Conflict Resolving rather than on Synergies – In the topic, discussions often circulate around human activity and its collision with the needs of ecology. Focussing on the conflicts can lead to a further mismatch between needs of ecology and current urban and economic realities. Finding common ground gets difficult and discussions lengthy. Realigning the focus on the development of synergies could possibly have a greater impact and positive entanglement of societal and ecological advocates. An example here could be the ‘light pollution’ debate ¹⁴ , which is one of the center discourses in the field. It is a crucial topic to address. Yet, I think it is a term that inherently suggests conflict rather than cooperation between human needs and environmental considerations¹⁵. Put very simply: Nature wants it dark, humans want it illuminated. It requires a lot of negiotiation and education to change this (please see footnotes^16 17 18). Also within each sphere the prevailing discourses focus on conflict resolution rather than creation of synergies. ^1 9 14

The Benefits – What Do Culture and Ecology Offer, Why Are They Both Vital for Cities?

Both culture and ecology significantly enrich urban life, providing a host of amenities that enhance the liveability and appeal of cities³. These two spheres are fundamental to the attractiveness of urban areas, influencing not only the residents and visitors but also playing a crucial role in where people choose to reside, especially in Western societies.

Fair enough, but here I want to make the bold and (to me) straightforward assumption, that culture and ecology both are at the very core of why some cities continue to thrive while others descend:

What happens if a city is not healthy for its inhabitants or for them to raise their kids? Yes, easy answer: If they can, people will try moving somewhere else.¹⁹

What happens if a city is not safe/stable to live in? Yes, easy answer: If they can, People will try moving somewhere else.

What happens if a city is not attractive to live in? Yes, easy answer: If they can, people will try moving somewhere else.¹⁹

Ecological and Socioeconomic Dimensions of the Urban Night Side-by-Side

For some of the mentioned characteristics both do not only contribute to attractiveness, which is a more or less optional urban development area, but also to vital urban functions³ that are at the core of what a city needs to offer to its citizens: E.g. safety and economic vitality or cooling and water management. Without those, a city will only poorly function.

The Figure above hightlights the individual role of socioeconomics and ecology within the urban system … What could be possible if we try bridging and synergising both?

Finding Ways Forward – Finding the Synergies

Proposition: Green Urbanism and Night-Culture in Synergy to enhance the Urban System as a whole.

Okay, good we know now…. But what do?!

To me, we should try finding an easy beginning. A beginning where we most likely will face little confrontation but enable those much-spoken synergies in a visible way. The link needs to be easy for everyone to understand the connections and the benefits what thinking about the “other sphere” can provide. Then over time, we may add the more delicate topics that maybe require more discussion and negotiation.

Together with Lutz Leichsenring from Vibelab, I, through my employer Fraunhofer IAO and the Department of Urban Systems Engineering started this process. Among other conferences and thanks to Lutz and Vibelab, I could take part in the ‘South by Southwest Conference and Festival – SXSW’ and the panel “The Transformation of Nightlife for a Sustainable Tomorrow”. This was the onset of our common considerations and since then we meet every couple of weeks to inspire us and to push things forward.

Push Things to Where?!

• One of the easiest links you may find bridging those spheres is Green Soundproofing. I wrote an article on our institute’s blog about this and soon afterwards a couple (!) of German cities reached out and showed their interest. The thought is easy: We spend so much on greening our cities, why not include nighttime culture and get double the benefit?
• And I’d say this is exactly the way to go: Find and make use of the easy links. Make it visible. Make it bold. But above all make it easy to participate.
• Well, listen closely: Coming to your city soon. Vibelab and Fraunhofer will make it happen :)!

… We will provdide a detailed description of our Green Soundproofing concept, the other initiative in the making (“Urban Systems Network Smart City @ Night”) and other practical ideas in the upcoming blogpost. Open-Source and free, just like both night and nature should be :)…

Epilogue: Seeing in the Dark – Nighttime’s Potential in Urban Innovation

Reflecting on why night-time issues remain underrepresented in urban planning reinforces my belief in the need for integrating efforts across both cultural and ecological dimensions. Ultimately, strategies that promote sustainable or green city development can be inherently beneficial for cultural and socioeconomic initiatives and vice versa.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched Jim Jarmusch’s “Night on Earth”, where a taxi driver picks up a blind passenger²⁰. The dialogue goes like this:

Taxi Driver: “It must be really hard to be blind, you’re unable to do so many things.”
Blind Woman: “Listen, jerk, I can do anything you can and a lot of things you’ll never do. I’m blind, that’s all.”
Taxi Driver: “You can’t drive a car, for example.”
Blind Woman: “And you can?”

The joke is, that the driver soon has an accident after this talk.

To me, this dialogue set in motion a stream of thought. I see that this could be understood as metaphor for the topic of this blog post. Urban development has perhaps been ‘blind’ to the full potential night and culture can offer. With the urban re-greening initiatives underway but in a rather ambient pace, also urban development may does not ‘see’ the full beneficial value of re-naturing cities.

Earlier this year, I attended the “Blind Date with Stuttgart” exhibition, an event that transformed participants’ understanding of their environment by navigating a replica of common places in Stuttgart in complete darkness. We were guided by blind individuals. It was unimaginable how difficult I found it to find my way. I and the other participants had to rely on our other senses – feeling, hearing and scenting.

And this is where I see a possible connection to the topic at hand:

City development, to grasp all possible benefits, disbenefits and pathways, requires a full spectrum of senses. Perhaps it’s not about ‘making cities ‘see” the night or about ‘taking cities’ ‘blindness” towards the incredible potential of culture and greening through conventional pathways, by e.g. adapting conventionally used economic metrics, coming up with new KPIs or merging existing ones into more sophisticated units. We tried this with extensive sustainable urban development programmes in the past decades.

Maybe it is more about developing a new ‘sense’ or readjusting towards other, maybe forgotten ‘senses’ for how the urban environment functions around the clock.

Could developing the bespoken synergies be a way? Let us find out. And if you want, let us find out together.

A special thank you to Lutz for revising this text.

… Be in touch: niklas.effenberger@iao.fraunhofer.de

The post Seeing in the Dark – Nighttime’s Potential in Urban Innovation appeared first on NIGHTTIME.ORG.

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). ↩

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This feature is part of our latest newsletter series we’re excited to launch! Dedicated to exploring the challenges and strategies for preserving nightlife culture around the globe. Cities After Dark Chronicles kicks off with a deep dive into an approach to saving at-risk venues.

Photo: Max Titov

What can you do to protect venues at risk in your city? This is what we did in Montréal

As our cities evolve and urban development progresses exponentially, costs rise and threats to beloved music venues intensify. You may discover that once-thriving hometown clubs are struggling to survive; some may have already closed for good. Many cities today are losing such establishments that are battling against the pressures of urban change. 

City administrations, especially in larger metropolises, can easily lose track of those venues and overlook venue closures amidst other urgent challenges. But nocturnal life is built on smaller businesses, and as more and more are lost, nighttime culture will suffer. A vivid night is an important part of healthy and functional cities. 

Explore how we tackled venue protection amidst urban shifts

It is in these moments of questioning what is happening with the culture in your city that the seeds of positive change are sown. In the face of venue closures and the uncertain fate of once-thriving nightlife spaces, it is crucial to recognize that these challenges often stem from external forces rather than mismanagement. Unaddressed issues can rapidly push thriving nightlife establishments into vulnerability and risk of extinction. 

However, in every obstacle lies an opportunity—a solution waiting to be unearthed. You just need to identify the causes precisely. Cities may seemingly share the same problems, however, labeling them with general terms like “gentrification” obscures city-specific manifestations and does not allow for tailor-made solutions. 

On the ground in  Montréal, we learned about the pressures faced by nightlife operators. Local venue owners felt like they had hit the ceiling like there was no way they could grow under current conditions. One reason is that venue rents have more than doubled in the past five years. This is especially threatening to independent venues that operate close to the margin. This also prevents new independent venues from opening. We observed that rents are increasing most rapidly in venue-dense parts of the city, meaning that these districts are at risk of losing vibrancy and diversity in their nightlife. 

Venue owners and operators were not only feeling these economic pressures. Squeezing them on the other end were pressures from existing and new neighbors. We heard a number of stories about contentious relationships between venues just wanting to provide nightlife experiences and neighbors just wanting to sleep. Venue owners and operators are finding creative solutions on their own in the absence of mediation by the city. Some, like Jules Gauliard-Martineau from Quai des Brumes, speak directly with neighbors to find solutions.

Cultural Infrastructure mapping at service

Claudy Philius, veteran promoter, and FRKY co-founder describes the damaging cycle of gentrification as new housing developments and their new occupants lead to venue displacement: “Everyone flocks to these condos because there’s an interesting nightlife…then boom…complaints left and right.” 

Through cultural infrastructure mapping, we were able to identify the characteristics of venues at risk and what measures can prevent them from disappearing. In Montréal, we found that in particular,  bars with dance floors in rapidly developing residential areas faced the most challenges. Conflicts between residents and businesses in these areas intensified, as urban development has created denser, mixed-use neighborhoods. 

Operating late into the night also made these venues more susceptible to noise complaints, thus jeopardizing lease renewal. This cultural infrastructure mapping exercise proved instrumental in understanding the nuances specific to Montréal. Using this valuable information, we were able to deliver step-by-step recommendations that took into account implementation timelines and their feasibility and applicability in Montréal.  

For example, not much can be done in the short term about doubling rents. However, if you can identify all of the sources of the pressures faced by venues, you can therefore create a strategy that will ease these pressures step-by-step. That is exactly what we did in Montréal. 

Photo: Amir Toossi

But what about your city? The issues plaguing your cultural hubs might differ, whether stemming from all types of urban development struggles or exacerbated by mismatched urban policy frameworks. Without the right research tools, addressing these challenges remains a matter of speculation. 

Cultural infrastructure mapping serves not only as a tool for researching the problem. It is also a protective measure for avoiding future clashes between venues and residents in your dynamic neighborhoods. Cultural infrastructure mapping has proven effective in cities that face similar challenges to Montréal. Solutions have included the expansion of sound protections for nightlife venues – for example, the adoption of the ‘agent of change’ principle.  

Our success in Montréal was rooted in research-driven insights and proactive measures. We were able to identify a set of unique problems, revise city frameworks, and come up with sustainable solutions that helped to bridge gaps between nighttime culture, nocturnal businesses, and the city administration.  

We are committed to extending our expertise to your communities, leveraging data-driven strategies to protect and revitalize local nightlife venues.

Download CFP Montréal here

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Two recent papers by Timo Koren, PhD and researcher and lecturer at Erasmus University, contribute valuable insights to nighttime research on how music genres shape social and spatial dynamics and inequalities of nightclubs. This research expands on established nighttime research topics of identity formation and regulation, viewing nightlife through the lens of cultural production. Using case studies of niche EDM and eclectic clubs in Amsterdam in 2019, it examines the ways in which the cultural production and economic organisation of club nights at genre-specific venues impact the gendered meanings and racial inscriptions of genres.

Here, the cultural production of the genre is the process of programming and organising club nights in niche EDM (styles outside mainstream EDM)  and eclectic (mix of genres including r&b, pop, hip hop and dancehall) venues. Cultural production produces social and cultural meaning, and economic conditions can lead to inequalities in labour and public participation. Genre is understood not only as a descriptive label, but also as a set of orientations, expectations, and conventions coming together to produce a certain kind of music. Within genres, norms, standards and geographies are not fixed and can change based on social, cultural and economic interactions. 

What causes gender inequalities in the cultural sector? Does this differ along genre lines? How is meaning assigned to gender in different genres? Existing research shows that gender inequalities in nightlife employment are a consequence of informal work cultures’ privileging of male labor, including closed social networks and sexist perceptions and stereotypes within the production of the genre.

This study uncovers new and localised debates. Genre cultures are influenced by public critique and political discourses on gender equality and exclusion, manifesting here in observed discussions on gender parity in line-ups and employment in niche EDM spaces. Efforts for gender parity and diversity are encouraged by these influences and celebrated in some nightlife spaces. Despite progress, club owners, promoters, DJs and other positions of influence remain majority male-occupied. Data reveals the prevalence of social and cultural constructions of genre ‘quality’, innate gendered music taste and genre ‘safety’. 

Niche EDM is subjectively perceived as a better quality genre than eclectic genres, due to DJ prestige and other factors. Niche EDM is associated with masculinity and some eclectic genres, like pop music, are seen as feminine. Some venues curate ‘female-friendly’ club nights on the assumption that masculine genre nights will lead to violence. This ignores real safety needs such as awareness and anti-harassment training. Sometimes genre, gender and place are connected – for example, ‘masculine’ Berlin techno. When genres travel, gendered standards and assumptions follow. This culminates in static, limited and less critical understandings of femininity and masculinity within genre communities.

How are genre identities and racial identities connected? How does cultural production marginalise genres and minority communities? How do genres become associated with race and how does that racialisation change over time and space? Existing research shows that processes of exclusion based on race, ethnicity and class originate partly from door policies and other access barriers. However, there are more stories to tell. This research looks at the ‘whitening’ process of historically POC genres and cultural narratives, the impacts of economic organisation in racialised genres and the experiences of POC promoters and nightlife patrons in majority white nightlife landscapes. 

Genres have cultural histories bound to place and community, but the connection between genre and social group is not fixed and can be lost and/or reassigned when genres travel. House, techno, r&b and hip hop originate from POC communities in American cities. As these genres became popular in the Netherlands, they were absorbed into the majority of music cultures and ‘whitened’. Association with POC genre histories was lost when no connection was made with minority communities in the Netherlands. The ‘colourblind genre’ myth also detaches the genre from any racial association and does not acknowledge local contemporary POC genre scenes.

In Amsterdam, while efforts are made to recognise genre histories and integrate local communities, POC and other marginalised promoters face discriminatory barriers. Whiteness is still the ‘invisible norm’ in cultural production, and discriminatory standards can also be adopted from other majority-white scenes. The economic organisation of nightlife in Amsterdam necessitates that club nights are profitable, and many spaces subscribe to a uniform identity. Collectives and parties without permanent venue homes, often with mainly non-white and marginalised audiences, do not fit this model and are excluded from cultural production. Problematic attitudes tying POC audiences to unsafety and increased violence still exist. 

This research uncovers the importance of programming and promotion in shaping social and spatial conditions in nightlife spaces and nighttime economies. It centres cultural production on combating discrimination and exclusion in nightlife. While dialogues and concrete steps are being taken, prohibitive stereotypes and other problematic standards remain. Promoters and programmers have the duty to address racial, gender and other barriers and bias in their spaces. This can be accomplished by 1) examining how nightclub production, economic organisation and other norms and standards contribute negatively and 2) engaging directly and inclusively with genre communities. After all, clubbers play a critical role by invoking genre social principles and ideals.

Read the publications from Timo Koren:

Koren, T. (2023) ‘ “They were told it was too Black”: The (re)production of whiteness in Amsterdam-based nightclubs’, Geoforum, [link]

Koren, T. (2022) ‘The work that genre does: How music genre mediates gender inequalities in the informal work cultures of Amsterdam’s nightclubs’, Poetics, [link]

The post How do music genres shape inequalities and spacial dynamics in nightclubs? appeared first on NIGHTTIME.ORG.

Nightlife scenes and local communities have all the potential to coexist peacefully and productively in the urban environment. Each enriches the other, leading to neighbourhood cohesion, mutual support and social and economic vitality. A city where people, businesses and culture can live, entertain, work and socialise together is a measure of urban economic and social sustainability.

Thriving nightlife districts are those which accommodate and consider residents, as well as invite and attract tourists. Compelling scenes provide platforms for new and innovative artists and maintain ties to neighbourhood traditions. These areas should be safe, functional and fun for all. Urban fabric thrives when urban planning and policy frameworks, zoning regulations and development rules consider residents’ quality of life equal to the commercial and cultural value of nightlife.

Conflicts over the use of urban space:

Unfortunately, conflicts between nightlife spaces, local communities and municipalities do occur. Recurrent quality of life concerns of residents include noise, nuisance and safety. Often, nightlife spaces are attacked by residents and municipalities both for simply providing the entertainment and cultural functions they are meant for. Restrictive curfews, inundation with noise complaints and fines, and unsupervised residential development threaten nightlife spaces and increase tension. Gentrification processes can push out long-standing communities, making way for entertainment districts only accessible to newer, more affluent incoming residents. These same processes can threaten long-standing venues, bars and other nightlife and cultural spaces when new residents do not accept preexisting neighbourhood functions and use. Municipal negligence to these dynamics and runaway real estate development has strained these actors.

When cities do not actively engage with these urban processes, unintended competition and animosity between local residents and businesses can, in the worst cases, lead to venues being forced to shut down under financial burdens. If this trend continues, more and more venues will close, and nightlife districts will lose historic character and vitality. Fortunately, local and international dialogue occurs between nightlife actors and policymakers. Mediation and compromise can be found via both official and unofficial channels. The push for later curfews, and other framework changes, can lead to robust and sustainable nightlife at the same time as livable neighbourhoods.

Agent of change principle:

In many cities, nightlife districts have historically taken root where residential land use is far less common than commercial. Examples include former industrial quarters, river or waterside land and urban core areas that have lost population density due to suburbanisation. This separation of land uses leads to relative peace for nightlife businesses, patrons and local communities. Neither disturbs nor encroaches on the other.

However, as neighbourhoods become increasingly more mixed-use, conflicts arise when existing businesses are burdened with the consequences of incoming residents or vice versa. Noise-generating activities from nightlife, including music and outdoor crowds, may disturb new residents to the degree that official noise complaints are made. Frustrated nightlife businesses are left to contend with resulting fines and a lack of municipal support. One strategy to manage this increasing trend is the agent of change principle. 

Essentially, the incoming entity is responsible for mitigating any changes that may occur due to its introduction into a neighbourhood. For example, if a residential apartment block were to be proposed in a nightlife district, the developer must manage the soundproofing of units and other mitigating measures. This would benefit businesses and residents, as neither is forced to deal with a disturbance.

Best practices and priority-setting:

Several nighttime business associations, tourism authorities, different levels of urban to national governments and other nightlife advocacy groups are currently engaging with the topic of “agent of change” and the potential of such measures to mitigate increasing conflicts over noise and nuisance in changing nightlife districts. In this way, best practices and lessons can be shared, leading ideally to the repetition of successes.

In December 2022, representatives from 24 Hour London of the Greater London Authority met with Cansel Kiziltepe, the German Secretary of State, to discuss sustainable 24-hour neighbourhoods where the city centre’s affordable housing construction can coexist with nightlife culture. 

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The agent of change concept is equally relevant for the construction of affordable housing as for the construction of middle and high-income housing and the conversion of commercial spaces (lofts, etc.) into high-end housing. Led by Night Mayor Robert-Jan Wille, the City of Alkmaar, Netherlands, is conducting location profiling of nightlife businesses, including the quality of soundproofing in nearby residential buildings.

In November 2022, the City of Pittsburgh met with nightlife venues to discuss the agent of change idea and how it can be applied. Also, in the United States, the Nighttime Economy Culture and Policy Alliance (NITE CAP) recently facilitated a gathering of minds on the topic.

In the UK, the Nighttime Industries Association (NTIA) has identified current priorities, including better frameworks for managing noise conflicts, soundproofing and the application of agent of change concepts in the nighttime economy. Nightlife actors understand how essential mitigation is for sustainable nightlife and livable centre city neighbourhoods.

Noise dispute case studies:

More and more venues and nightlife districts come under threat of debilitating fines and

in the worst-case scenario, closure. Complainants are primarily concerned with the noise disturbance from nighttime activities near their residences. Examining a selection of past and present venue case studies illustrates the current state of affairs regarding the agent of change and other creative solutions.

In November 2021, the Manchester Night & Day independent music venue was served with a noise abatement notice from the city council. The venue could be taken to court and closed due to ‘noise nuisance’. The noise complaint originated from a neighbour who had moved in during a pandemic lockdown after the venue reopened. Night & Day opened its stage for emerging artists more than 30 years ago, well before the city council approved the construction of surrounding flats. The venue has already made sound mitigation improvements and meets noise level regulations. They blame the city for not considering existing businesses during housing development and failing to coordinate between municipal departments. Court proceedings will begin in early 2023.

Elsewhere in the UK, Birmingham’s The Nightingale has reached a so-called ‘section 106 agreement’ with developers and the city granting £1.5 million for sound mitigation renovations after a large residential development had been approved ‘in principle’ directly across from the 40-year-old LGBTQIA+ venue. In such agreements, the obligation to lessen community impacts is usually placed on developers. However, in this case, funding for these works has been provided to the venue. On the one hand, the 106 agreement concludes a step forward and an important precedent for defending nightlife districts from new, unregulated residential developments. However, the worry remains because noise complaints can still be filed. 

The expenditure by venues in time, legal fees and changes to neighbourhood character still threaten the vitality and survival of nightlife districts. Further examples are seen in the stories of several historical venues in Montreal, all long-standing platforms for emerging artists. Some years ago, Quai des Brumes began receiving noise complaints from a new neighbour who had received permission to convert a commercial space into a residence. The city awarded a subvention to construct sound insulation, which was impossible due to the ageing venue structure. Eventually, Quai des Brumes bought out the neighbour to move. More recently, La Tulipe has also been contending with noise complaints from a neighbour who converted a commercial space next door into a residence. The municipality granted this rezoning permit in error, and the borough government has taken the case to court.

Alternative solutions:

Venues do not stand nor operate alone in these noise and nuisance conflicts. In Manchester, calls for the city council to drop its legal action against Night & Day have come from the city’s music commission and the region’s night-time economy advisor. Close to 100,000 people have signed a petition to drop the abatement notice. City councillors in Birmingham have expressed concern about the impact of new residential development on the longevity of venues such as The Nightingale and the safety of its LGBTQIA+ patrons. Artists who began their careers at such venues, including Matt Healy from The 1975 and Guy Harvey from Elbow (both in the case of Night & Day), have raised their voices against closures.

Attempts are often made to engage directly with surrounding residents in an effort to solve noise conflicts outside of any penal system. Night & Day holds quarterly meetings with local residents to discuss issues of concern. Quai des Brumes and neighbouring venues, including L’Esco and Pow Pow, have called residents directly to discuss noise complaints before they are made to authorities. NTIA encourages members to engage in a ‘360 degree approach’ to communication whereby all businesses, residents and authorities contribute. There is obvious potential for addressing disturbance complaints when the “agent of change” principles are absent or do not apply.

Municipal mediation programs present another option wherein willing participants can problem-solve within their urban communities to avoid costly and unnecessary interference from authorities. The New York City Office of Nightlife has recently launched one such program. MEND (Mediation & Conflict Resolution Program) is a citywide initiative and non-punitive and voluntary mediation program offered to residents and nightlife businesses. MEND is available for disputes between residents and venues, neighbouring venues, and commercial landlords. The program has recently mediated approximately 80 cases with a roughly 80% success rate.

The post How to address noise complaints and other neighbourhood issues? appeared first on NIGHTTIME.ORG.

Lockdowns have created immense challenges for night-time industries, generating a ripple effect that has the potential to have a lasting impact. However, now is the time to enact change, to think creatively and try new and innovative approaches to overcome these obstacles and reignite the night-time economy.

VibeLab Co Founder Mirik Milan, VibeLab Asia Pacific Director Jane Slingo and Urban Planner Dayle Bennett have co-authored the paper The Lockdown Effect to catalyse thinking and action in three areas: 

Education and Talent Development 

Investment in the future generation of creatives enables them to learn, practice and experience artistic and creative endeavours. We are at risk of losing talent and skilled artists forever if we do not focus on funding and establishing talent development programs.

Real Estate and Repurposing Space

The increase in vacancy of spaces across our cities may be troubling, but also signifies the shift in the way we live, work and shop.This signifies an opportunity to reconsider the ways in which we repurpose and activate these spaces. Taking a flexible and innovative approach to land use may be the key in reactivating urban areas in the short-term but could also lead to long term renewal.

Localised Night-time Economy

A diverse night-time economy creates better amenity and liveability and should be considered not only in the CBDs but across suburban and regional areas. The closure of international travel and shift to working from home is an opportunity to establish localised night-time economies and a tool to attract greater investment, business and population. 

VibeLab identifies pathways to reopening cities night-time economies and firmly believes that collaboration is key. VibeLab is committed to taking a collective and evidence based approach, generated through research and local partnerships to create a safer, more equitable and sustainable nighttime. 

If you would like more information please do not hesitate to get in contact with us via email and read the report

The post The Lockdown Effect appeared first on NIGHTTIME.ORG.

“Before the pandemic, around 15-20 international acts would DJ in Tbilisi each weekend,” recalls Georgian nightlife industry stalwart David Lezhava, managing director of the recently formed Cultural and Creative Industries Union of Georgia. “But some local DJs bring more listeners than an international star ever could.”

It’s the kind of local pride night creators in other parts of the world dream of. And, as any traveller who has been on a dance floor pilgrimage to Tbilisi can verify, fully deserved. “Tbilisi has become a major international electronic music destination lately,” Lezhava continues. “The club culture has been exemplary and the works of local artists have laid the foundation for new cultural processes in the country.”

Electronic music and nightlife culture was certainly having a moment in Georgia’s capital in the 20-teens. A creative boom was busy expressing itself in the growing number of bars, nightclubs, music venues and multi-purpose cultural spaces dotted across the vibrant cityscape, and the world was taking notice, with techno-tourists flocking to Tbilisi for bucket-list nightclubs like Bassiani, nestled in the bowels of a Soviet-era football stadium on the outskirts of the city, and finding themselves equally captivated by the surrounding energy of a city in the midst of a cultural forward charge, driven by local creators and spearheaded by electronic music culture. 

Little more than 20 years old, the Georgian electronic music scene remains a relentlessly high quality one. Subjective though the statement may be, enough music makers and lovers have concurred for this writer to feel confident in saying it’s actually hard to find bad music on the Tbilisi nightlife circuit. “We had superb first generation of producers in Georgia, and our electronic music scene was built around their taste.” Lezhava explains. “The clubs were tiny, but with top quality music, and as the scene kept developing we went from tiny clubs to huge spaces like Bassiani, but the quality of music was kept. The people in charge in Tbilisi are creative people; this is what makes our scene so good.” 

Tbilisi club culture made international headlines in 2018, when around 15,000 young Georgians gathered outside parliament to defend it and what it symbolised, as a safe space of tolerance and progressive values – a lightening quick response to aggressive raids the night before which they felt targeted not only their music but their way of life. Evocative videos raced across mainstream media and internet backchannels of techno blasting across stone structures and moving bodies, dancers holding posters in defence of love, tolerance and dancing, and the vivid red smoke of flares wafting defiantly overhead. 

To outsiders, it looked like here was an electronic music scene that knew its own value, and that could defend itself. And yet, lacking any formal support or even acknowledgment from the government, nor any organisation directed towards securing it, Georgian club culture found itself in immediate peril and without aid within weeks of last year’s national lockdown. David Lezhava, together with Naja Orashvili, owner of the aforementioned Tbilisi techno haven Bassiani, decided to act. “We knew we were in tough situation,” says Lezhava. “And that’s when the association was born.” The pair, aided by a growing number of motivated industry stakeholders, has mobilised, organised and formalised the representation and protection of Georgian electronic music and club culture through a non-government, non-profit association called the Cultural and Creative Industries Union of Georgia (CCIU Georgia).

One year since its inception, CCIU Georgia can count itself among the pandemic’s silver linings, a clear success story in advocacy, born from adversity. Beginning life in the wake of lockdown as a 60-member facebook group of concerned stakeholders, by mid April CCIU Georgia was an official organisation under the stewardship of Orashvili and Lezhava, meeting periodically in the dormant club spaces of the city to keep dialogue flowing and develop an action plan. Like countless clubs across the world, Georgia’s venues were facing bankruptcy, with no aid from the government forthcoming. “Every month or so we would get together with the representatives from the electronic music scene: djs and everybody from the field, discussing the issues. Where our goal was to advance and lobby the interests of local club culture and nighttime creative industries. These early discussions became the basis of our plan.” The most pressing need for the shuttered industry was of course money, so the association’s first official project was to establish the Tbilisi outpost of United We Stream.

United We Stream – which streams DJ sets from otherwise empty clubs and other interesting cultural spaces – launched as a fundraising service for Berlin clubs within days of Germany’s Covid-19 lockdown, and rapidly blossomed into a global phenomenon, providing an international cultural platform in the digital space through which to crowdsource funds for struggling club venues and industry workers, simultaneously raising the profile of local scenes, spaces and artists. In May of 2020 Tbilisi became the 11th city to join the UWS family, which now spans 117 cities. “We’ve broadcast 19 separate shows so far, one of which was a 15-hour marathon in January,” Lezhava states proudly, “and showcased around 100 local artists.” Just days ago Tbilisi notched up its 19th broadcast, from MTKVARZE, a techno haven within a distinctive 1950s building on the bank of Tbilisi’s Kura River, and in early April will stream to the world from Lisi Rest and Tbilisi State Academy of Arts. UWS Tbilisi has raised around 30,000 GEL for venues and artists so far.

By December of last year, despite having also raised an additional sums for club nightlife workers through private funding, the situation reached a critical point. “We were seeing clubs go bankrupt right and left,” Lezhava remembers, “and there were not enough private funds to go around. As more and more clubs went dark, we realised we needed additional help, and so we approached the government.” Why hadn’t the government been CCIU Georgia’s first port of call instead of last resort? In fact, this was not the first time the Georgian electronic music community had reached out for state aid, having previously sent a statement via letter, signed by a broad cross-section of the industry, which was never responded to. Empowered and inspired by global knowledge exchange through VibeLab’s internationally collaborative practical guide to reactivating nighttime economy and culture, the Global Nighttime Recovery Plan (GNRP), the CCIU tried again, and differently. 

“Well, on the second round, we didn’t just write a letter, we wrote the whole plan,” Lezhava says. “We approached the government via the City Hall with what we called ‘The 4 Point Plan: Electronic Music and Club Culture Recovery Fund’. It detailed how to save the electronic music scene, how to take the stress off, and help it reach the summertime when open air events could start functioning, how to design and run safe open air events, and how to help the ecosystem open, at least partially.” 

“We are particularly grateful for our participation in GNRP sessions, and for the four chapters circulated, which served as invaluable insight and experience when drawing our own package to the state.”

This time, it worked. The government took notice of the industry’s plight, took the plan on board, and sourced the funds to turn it into reality. After only a few months and several rounds of discussions, the mayor of Tbilisi announced 2million GEL had been allocated in response to CCIU’s lobbying. “Electronic music wasn’t in their plan; it wasn’t even in their heads. It was born in our heads, and we just kept going, and kept proving to [the government] why they are better off doing this for us than having a totally bankrupt nightlife scene.”

In addition to the plan, Lezhava and the CCIU team had provided the government with important context, to ensure their understanding of the scene they were trying to protect, and clearly express the precariousness of its current situation. “We painted a picture for them,” Lezhava says, “and explained how the electronic music ecosystem works so they understood us better. We mapped out who the plan would reach, outlining all the possible beneficiaries, explaining why it’s important to help DJ schools as well, for example, because that’s where the young generation is coming up through and being fed to clubs and venues.”

The City has designated CCIU Georgia to receive and distribute the grant money, at once a great responsibility and great relief to Lezhava and Orashvili, who knew they could establish a fairer and more efficient system of distribution for their own industry than the government could. “We are launching a web platform: act4culture.com. Act4Culture will accept applications and award funds across four separate programs, encompassing the entire electronic music ecosystem in Tbilisi, including clubs and pre clubs, musical bars, multifunctional music venues, festivals, event series, labels, vinyl shops, artist agencies, dj schools, electronic radio stations, and all individuals in the electronic music field.” 

Though born from the bleakest year the scene has ever suffered, the Act for Culture grant money represents a significant moment for Georgian club culture. When announcing it, Tbilisi mayor Kakha Kaladze (a former footballer with AC Milan, if the name is ringing bells) praised Tbisili club culture and acknowledged its role in raising the tourist potential of the city to new heights. “He said in his speech that he knows the scene has helped the city immensely,” recalls Lezhava, “and he wants to pay some of that respect back. Thus far, we had never had any politician, let alone the mayor, accept that electronic music is a form of art. But Kaladze declared club culture is a culture – his speech was an important moment.”

“The financial aid also represents a big hope for Tbilisi, as it will preserve numerous safe and free spaces that are so vital to the city. Such places are truly essential, where young people meet and exchange ideas and visions, jointly organize to solve common difficulties and pursue common interests. In the context of current social challenges of the country, such outposts of modern culture have an important role to play.”

Stay up to date with the work of the CCIU by following them on Facebook.

Our Features section publishes original content created by nighttime.org associates, going deeper into global COVID-19 response strategies and scene perspectives by drawing on our international network of night mayors, nightlife advocates and industry stakeholders for comment. 

If you would like to contribute, contact hello@vibe-lab.org with your pitch. 

The post The new organisation saving Tbilisi club culture appeared first on NIGHTTIME.ORG.

A Q&A with Mark van Bergen – dance music journalist, author of the seminal book on Dutch electronic music, Dutch Dance, and lecturer for Fontys University’s Dance Industry minor – on his experiences teaching students about the dance music industry, whilst that industry is stuck on pause.

Mark’s own story shows the unexpected career pathways that lead into and away from nightlife, hopefully inspiring his students to persevere with their passion despite the discouraging circumstances, and shape the future of nightlife in unpredictable ways.

Last year the Dance Industry minor students reached out to us at nighttime.org looking for work experience opportunities, eventually collaborating with our team to make this timeline of the tumultuous year for nightlife that was 2020, and the interactive map of night time offices.

What motivated you to run this course, and how did you first become involved?
 
“It all started with a passion for electronic music and parties. I entered nightlife when house music was first popping up in the south of the Netherlands, around 1990, and soon started DJing and throwing parties.
I was about to study journalism, and later on I would combine both worlds. I never thought I would ever live from the passion, but here we are!”

“I wrote a lot about dance music and culture for various newspapers and magazines, before my first book was released in 2013: ‘Dutch Dance’, celebrating 25 years of house music culture in the Netherlands. That opened a lot of doors – in fact Fontys Academy for Creative Industries came knocking at mine. Many of their students had ambitions behind the scenes in the dance industry, but the Academy had no curriculum for it. I left the newspaper world and took on the challenge to develop a minor, a dedicated semester program. I still think it’s a great opportunity to help launch the careers of these young talents, together with my team.”

This is an industry where many people tend to learn on the job, rather than seek out a course. Why do you think some formal education is especially useful in the dance music industry? 

“Funny you say so, because that’s exactly the method we use in the minor Dance Industry program. It’s challenged based – ‘learning by doing’ – in collaboration with real and relevant clients and stakeholders. We team up with Amsterdam Dance Event, which we have a long running educational partnership with, and we also collaborate with promotors, DJs and their
managers. A group of students worked on a project for your own platform. This way, they work on real and actual challenges, gain a lot of experience and grow a network in the same time.”

“Of course, we still offer knowledge and tools from books – such as mine! – and from other written sources, but practice is the leading principle. Just look at my team: none of the members is classical teachers, we all have one leg in the industry ourselves. Myself, I still run my own electronic music blog, This Is Our House, and then we have a night mayor (Siem Nozza), a headliner artist manager (Nigel Claassen, Bassjackers) and an ADE curator (Jesler Amarins) in the team, among others. We have an intimate impression of what is happening on the scene, and all have quite some network.”

Many of the events and artists your students would usually gain work experience through didn’t happen in 2020/21, due to the pandemic. Where did you look to find alternative work experience for them, and how has that worked out?

“Of course, this was a struggle. Everybody hoped to visit Amsterdam for ADE in October, for instance. Instead, 80% of the program was offered through a screen. Still, for their experience and learning process it didn’t make a great difference in the end. The minor is built around three practical cases that the students research develop and realise themselves: a conference (with ADE as our client), an event and a music release. For the release, Covid made no difference. They were still able, together with an artist of their choice, to bring an electronic music track onto the market. For the very first edition of ADE Online, our students developed and hosted a couple of panels. As for the event, well yes, they all dreamt of events with huge crowds and shows, but the situation just wasn’t possible. And yet there was a huge need for connection and alternatives. So in separate organisations they worked on 11 online or blended event concepts, most of them streams, which were all realised but one. We had to coach hard, as the motivation dropped many times, but everybody worked their asses off and were very satisfied by the end.”

Are there any changes in the way you ran the course during the pandemic that you think might be useful to maintain when normality returns?

“To be honest, I think there is a future for blended education. A mix of on- and offline sessions. Make no mistake: location sessions stay in the core, if they are allowed. Apart from the social component that youngsters really need (as do we teachers), we need face-to-face contact for coaching, especially when it comes to interactive sessions, pitches and group work, and of course for working-in-the-field. But as far as the ‘classical’ lectures are concerned, in which it is more about transferring knowledge, I think
there is nothing wrong with offering them online. A lot of students prefer them as well, they don’t have to travel and can watch back recorded lectures, if they have more important things to do. You just have to approach those online lectures differently, with shorter time slots and more interactive components for instance.”

As the next generation of industry professionals, what have your students’ own impressions been about this time, and how it may impact their future? 

“Everybody’s just fed up with it, you know. Quarantines have a massive impact on young people, especially their social lives. The last couple of years, we’ve seen mental issues coming to the forefront more and more already. This viral era will only bring more struggles, I fear. That’s also what we’ve been coaching on, doing a lot of talks on private issues.”

“As music lovers, they also miss nightlife so much. Some visited or organised raves, and we’ve seen a lot of illegal house parties at student houses as well. It’s a bad thing for the virus, but I can understand their motives at that age; I probably would have done the same at 20. I don’t think they are insecure about their professional future though, we all believe things will recover in a couple of months. And I’m glad our students can look back on last semester quite positively. Having viewed the results of the student survey we send out at the end of each semester, it turns out they have learned and experienced a lot despite the restrictions.”

2020 was a year like no other, that will have an impact on the dance music industry for a long time to come. How do you think this unique period in history will influence what you teach your students in future?

“I think that, just as in education, there is a future in nightlife for ‘blended’ events. Where you’ll have the ‘classical’ physical event on a festival site, for locals and fans willing to travel and pay the full monty for a live experience. Then on the other hand, but also increasingly merging with what’s happening on site, there will be an online edition for fans all over the world to attend as well, or watch back afterwards. The experiences and lessons we gained on streaming in the last year are huge. The world is your market, and if you are able to stay within your concept, create extra value and drop a solid production, you can definitely monazite it. I think that’s something we’re going to apply or coach on in our education. More scenario planning, by any means.”

And how do you think this year will affect the opportunities your students may have when they complete the course?

“In our curriculum we always try to adapt to what the industry wants from future professionals, and translate this into a challenging education for our students. Let them learn by success, but also by letting them fail in a safe way, so they are well prepared. We did that in the past, and we will
maintain it. And I think one of the best things that comes out of this approach is experience, flexibility and problem solving. Last year has pushed these soft and hard skills to the max. So far, we’ve seen our graduates reach great positions in the industry, and I don’t doubt that, when
everything gets back together in a healthy way, our students are ready to build the future.”

Learn more about Fontys ACI’s Minor Dance Industry (which you can also follow as an exchange student, from partner universities around the world.

Check out nighttime.org’s 2020 nightlife timeline Fontys students helped create.

Our Features section publishes exclusive original content created by nighttime.org associates, going deeper into global COVID-19 response strategies and scene perspectives by drawing on our international network of night mayors, nightlife advocates and industry stakeholders for comment. 

If you would like to contribute, contact hello@vibe-lab.org with your pitch. 

The post Teaching the nightlife business, in an era without nightlife appeared first on NIGHTTIME.ORG.

 A few months ago, it looked like rapid testing was about to explode onto the European nightlife and events scene – an additional and reassuring layer of defence which would push the industry decisively further down the path to reopening. Encouraged by the increased accuracy and affordability of the rapid antigen tests, which can turn around results of 99.68% accuracy in just fifteen minutes, op-ed articles proliferated on how this testing system could be used to simultaneously fight the virus through increased testing rates, whilst offering nightlife and events operators a chance at conducting their business safely, and dancefloor-starved punters a chance to party legally. 

Plans were laid. The Dutch government was collaborating with festival organisers, using their expertise in crowd and event management to establish rapid testing ‘streets’ in several cities across the Netherlands, and planning for a series of trial concerts to explore the efficacy of a variety of safety measures, rapid testing among them. In Barcelona, the Apolo theatre was due to host its first large scale concert, partnering with local hospital Can Ruti to use a rapid testing strategy to enable a thousand people to gather for music for the first time in months. 

In Berlin, the ever proactive nightlife advocacy body, Berlin Clubcommission, had created a detailed plan to use nightclub workers alongside several hundred volunteer medical professionals to set up and run rapid testing stations out of Berlin’s now empty club and cultural spaces. At first, to simply increase testing rates, and later with a view to reopening these spaces for their intended purpose.

As many are painfully aware, the momentum that was building came to a crashing halt as the virulent second waves sent Covid-19 case numbers skyrocketing across the northern hemisphere, with heightened restrictions and lockdowns soon following. 

The rapid testing trials were cancelled, but that doesn’t mean the conversation or the preparation should be. 

Rapid testing is the transition strategy the nightlife and events industries need to survive the inevitable lag between lifted lockdowns and a sufficiently vaccinated population. Stakeholders cannot afford to wait for the government to act on their behalf – and must instead use their expertise and available resources to show the way forward.

Recent news about the Pfizer vaccine approval and roll out is, of course, very encouraging. But it would be both naive and neglectful for it to be used as an excuse to stop the essential problem-solving process that the world’s nightlife and events industries have been engaged in all year, trying to find ways to open responsibly and financially viably whilst Covid-19 is still very much at large. No matter where you are in the world, these industries are in immediate peril, and cannot afford to simply wait until an entire population is vaccinated to reopen.

“In October, Clubcommission established a detailed plan for rapid testing stations,” says Clubcommission spokesperson and VibeLab partner Lutz Leichsenring, “so that night culture could make a significant contribution to curb the spread of infections in the young target group and relieve the burden on health authorities. Now the testing events are on hold, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep planning for them – there is much more work to do to make sure we can hit the ground running safely and efficiently as soon as restrictions allow it.”

UK event management and logistics company, Swallow Events, understands there is no time to waste. Last month the company announced that its rapid testing screening service facility is ready for hire for events in the UK and beyond. Partnering with heavyweight pharmaceutical company Roche, and in constant discussion with a leading healthcare consultancy which also advises the UK government and local authorities, Swallow Events is the first private company to make serious moves on the service which could make all the difference in reopening nightlife events. 

“It is absolutely huge what can be achieved here,” says Swallow Events partner Grego O’Halloran. “Yes, most of Western Europe is under severe lockdown restrictions, but this won’t always be the case. Going forward we believe the ability to rapid test will determine the extent to which events can return and on what scale.”

O’Halloran and Swallow Events’ founder Oli Thomas realised months ago that legislation was trailing well behind developments in pharmaceutical technology, restricting the industry’s opportunities for recovery. The pair decided to do something about the lag. “I’m shocked at just how much we’ve been forgotten about,” says Thomas.  “When an industry makes enough noise our government responds – but it’s a reactionary and not a proactive process.”

“As history tells us, the events industry is often at the back of the list when it comes to priorities,” O’Halloran adds. “So this movement has to work very much from the ground up, with promoters and venues adopting testing to show local authorities and licensing bodies that their events are safe and influencing legislation change in that way.”

This sentiment is very much shared by the Berlin Clubcomission, which is well practiced at designing its own survival strategies. “We know by now that we need a bottom-up approach when it comes to nightlife – we cannot wait for the government to act. It’s up to the industry to come up with its own solutions, manage all the details and push the nightlife agenda with government.”

Though the current situation with the pandemic is extremely precarious, bodies like Berlin Clubcommission argue these trials will help not harm the community, even as cases rise. 

“Of course we are hoping for rapid testing to enable reopening of the nightlife industry sooner,” says Leichsenring, “but that’s the long game. For now we are simply trying to become part of the solution through increased testing rates.” Unfortunately, Germany’s restrictions still prevent the Clubcommission from putting their plans into action.

One government, however, has recently approved rapid testing plans in order to get festivals running again. Last week, Swallow Events announced a partnership with Albania’s UNUM festival, which now has approval from the Albanian government to use rapid testing to go ahead in June 2021, with festival goers able to experience the event in a normal manner provided they test negative before entry. Although Singaporean government has been trialling the use of rapid testing for large scale business events throughout November, Albania is the first country in the world to approve rapid testing for social and cultural events. It’s an encouraging example of the industry pushing progress on legislation, and hopefully the first of many in the coming months.

Indeed The Netherlands is hot on its heels. Despite the cancellation of November’s events, plans are now back in motion for large-scale concert trials in January, under the name Back To Live. A new platform has been formed for the purpose: Fieldlab Events is a combination of event organisers working in collaboration with the government, scientists and other interest groups to bring about the safe return of events by spring of 2021, with rapid testing at the forefront of their safety measures. These trials are still dependent on falling case numbers in the coming months, however. 

It makes sense for cities to adapt their rapid testing plans depending on the current severity of the outbreak. In Sydney for example, where cases are low to non-existent, rapid testing could enable clubs and dance events to function in an almost normal way, making them far more financially viable than the Covid-cautious opportunities currently available, which still involve strictly limited dance floor numbers and do not make it financially beneficial for clubs or music festivals to reopen. 

At the other end of the scale, in parts of Western Europe or America, where the pandemic remains uncontrolled, rapid testing can be a way for event operators to use their skills to increase testing numbers, and begin practicing for a system which can eventually reopen the industry once restrictions allow.

In either case, it’s important that the testing process becomes normalised – in the events industry, and beyond. Testing should not be a difficult process, nor should it be feared. In most parts of the world, complete eradication of the virus is next to impossible, so learning to live with systems like this, which increase public safety whilst still allowing a sense of normal life to continue, is crucial. It must also be acceptable to acknowledge that there will always be a small element of risk in attending a large scale event whilst the virus is circulating, even at a low level. But that, with the strong safety net rapid testing can provide, it is a calculated and acceptably small risk – like so many others we take in the course of our lives. 

Rapid testing is not a perfect tool – but it is a powerful one, ready to be used in conjunction with other safety measures and adjusted to the context of the moment. It’s up to the industry to push the agenda, do the leg work, and approach governments with a plan of action ready to go. 

Although a vaccine is on the horizon, this won’t be an overnight solution,” Swallow Events’ Oli Thomas reasons. “I see testing as having a long term future for events and gatherings of all sizes.”

“Our aim is simple,” says Grego O’Halloran. “To give the events industry the best chance of getting back on its feet, as soon as possible.”

Culture is not a tap, which can be switched on and off at will. Every month that goes by without nightlife, festivals and concerts – the industry and the culture that invigorates it is weakened, sometimes irreversibly. Money and hope runs out, businesses fold, talents find other outlets, and – perhaps most corrosively – habits change. Rapid testing is the best chance the industry has to survive the time between lockdowns and vaccinations. We can’t afford to ignore it.   

Our Features section publishes original content created by nighttime.org associates, going deeper into global COVID-19 response strategies and scene perspectives by drawing on our international network of night mayors, nightlife advocates and industry stakeholders for comment. 

If you would like to contribute, contact hello@vibe-lab.org with your pitch. 

The post Rapid testing: The bridge between lockdowns and vaccinations appeared first on NIGHTTIME.ORG.

From lockouts through to lockdowns, Sydney’s nightlife industry has been through the wringer these past six years. Jordan Rahlia charts how nightlife advocacy has played a crucial role over this time in transforming state government attitudes and actions towards nightlife, highlighting why – pandemic notwithstanding – 2020 has held clear signs of success.

It may not feel like it yet but – somewhere amidst the shock and shutdowns and general turmoil of 2020 – Sydney is proving itself to be a success story in the power of sustained nightlife advocacy. 

It would be insulting to the thousands of nightlife industry workers and business owners facing unemployment or closure to consider this a time for celebration. Obviously, all is not well. Due to the global pandemic, the music and hospitality industries are barely keeping their noses above water, adjacent industries like taxis or late night retail are suffering from lack of foot traffic, the clubbing and festival sectors are effectively frozen and financially free-falling and eight months into the pandemic almost none of the Federal Government’s Arts sector support package has been spent. 

This grim context makes it all the more important for Sydney-siders to appreciate that a decisive battle has been won on the wearied front of Sydney nightlife, where the industry has been in retreat since 2014 when the state government introduced the infamous Lockout Laws (which included heavy restrictions on alcohol consumption and movement between venues) in an attempt to curb violence after dark.

It was six years coming, but change is here. In January of this year the Lockout Laws were quietly rolled back. Nine months and one global pandemic later, The New South Wales State Government’s 24 Hour Economy Strategy for Sydney has arrived, ushering in an era of possibility for Sydney’s nightlife sector. 

Created in consultation with several of Sydney’s local councils and bodies like the Night Time Industries Association, the Restaurant and Catering Industry Association, the Live Music Office, Keep Sydney Open and Theatre Network NSW, The Strategy outlines plans for a holistic night offering, including greater diversity of experiences available after dark, increased cultural activations, and relaxation of approval processes for outdoor licenses, live music and late-opening. It promotes improved transport options, increased infrastructure and lighting after dark, and more protections for existing music venues against noise complaints. Its plans are not limited to the city centre either, with a “neon grid” proposed which will highlight, protect and link various nightlife hubs around greater Sydney. 

“After years of limiting the nightlife conversation to incidents of alcohol-fuelled violence, in 2020 the NSW State Government has drastically and publicly changed tack, recognising the nighttime economy as something worth promoting and protecting.”

After years of limiting the nightlife conversation to incidents of alcohol-fuelled violence, in 2020 the NSW State Government has drastically and publicly changed tack, recognising the nighttime economy as something worth promoting and protecting. 

It will make all the difference. Though local councils like City of Sydney have been allies to nightlife for decades, as Libby Harris, City of Sydney’s Nighttime Economy Manager, puts it – when it comes to meaningful action the State Government “holds a lot of the key levers that we need pulled to enable a better operating environment for nightlife.”

The machinery is in motion; propelled into fast-forward on its new nightlife approach by the economic pressures of the pandemic, in the last few weeks the government has already committed 15 million in funding to enable City of Sydney’s plans to transform the city centre into a “24 hour alfresco city” this summer. Meanwhile, the state government-supported Great Southern Nights initiative will see 1000 Covid-safe concerts across the state in the month of November, attempting to re-invigorate a live music industry that has been silenced since March. 

“There are a lot of people in government now that are on board,” explains Libby Harris. “They understand what needs to happen and are very supportive. I know there’s a lot of fatigue in the industry, but there really is light at the end of the tunnel.”

So how did we get here?

Changing the narrative

For years Sydney’s nightlife advocates have laboured to broaden the conversation beyond issues of drug and alcohol abuse. Cultural activist group (and later political party) Keep Sydney Open came in swinging in the early years of lockout laws, with large-scale protest events fuelled by an emotional argument on the intrinsic cultural value of nightlife. KSO’s campaign quickly matured to include extensive economic research, and draw on international examples to show alternatives to increasing safety after dark that didn’t require draconian restrictions and heavy policing. “It wasn’t just a matter of a couple of street rallies,” recalls KSO’s chief spokesperson Tyson Koh. “We had people with mathematics PHDs look into government reports and do economic modelling, we read nighttime management plans from global cities and folded that into our shopping list of policies and requests.”

Simultaneously, Libby Harris and the team at City of Sydney worked relentlessly within government, also attempting to reframe nightlife discussions, “towards what we want to see more of: more culture, more creativity and more diversity after dark”.

It took a while to be heard. In 2017, NSW’s incoming Premier Gladys Berejiklian was asked for the first time in a radio interview to describe her position on the Lockout Laws. Her response in praise of the laws argued that, “Mums and Dads in the suburbs are worried about what their young kids are doing when they’re having a good time… [Lockout Laws] send the message that it’s not OK to have a culture where it’s cool to get drunk and hit people,” – both insulting and infantilising the overwhelmingly non-violent people of all age groups who work and participate in nightlife culture. 

“A lot of the language that the government now uses can all be found in the very first submission that Keep Sydney Open made into the Lockouts inquiry.

Three years on, the Berejiklian government’s 24hr Strategy uses rhetoric and promotes policies that nightlife advocates have been preaching since the start. As Tyson Koh says, “A lot of the language that the government now uses can all be found in the very first submission that Keep Sydney Open made into the Lockouts inquiry. From phrases like ‘night time economy’ and ‘vibrancy’, to equating people going out with employment and livelihoods in connective industries such as taxi, retail and restaurant businesses.” 

The vindication The Strategy provides is explicit and complete; it even dedicates a chapter to “changing the narrative” of Sydney nightlife. “Prior to Covid-19,” it reads, “Sydney’s predominant narrative was still focused on licence laws and policing night-time activity, particularly with regards to alcohol-related activity… The conversation must be widened to take on a more forward-thinking and holistic view of the city’s nightlife”. Well, yeah. 

Unity and self-organising

So why is the government listening now? At least part of the answer is that the industry is beginning to speak with a more united voice. 

In 2016, when the (then) Night Mayor of Amsterdam Mirik Milan visited Sydney for the Electronic Music Conference (EMC), he arrived to an industry in despair and disarray, struggling to cope with the hostile conditions the government had created for nightlife operators and punters alike. His most important message: get united, and get organised. “There were so many different voices, and all with their own interests,” Libby Harris recalls of that time. “It diluted their strength as far as being able to advocate for change.” 

The following year Milan returned, partnering with EMC founder Jane Slingo to form Global Cities After Dark conference (GCAD), which sought to strengthen global knowledge and networks in the field of nightlife advocacy, and narrow the gap between culture makers and policy makers. GCAD brought some of Sydney nightlife’s key stakeholders and cultural drivers together in a room with members of the state government, to converse and collaborate for the first time. Then, in 2018, City of Sydney convened the Creative Sector and Nightlife Advisory Panel, dedicated to enhancing dialogue between the industry and government on nightlife issues. The industry was uniting – and the government began to listen.

The pandemic of 2020 has galvanised that unity. Emily Collins, managing director of MusicNSW and member of the City of Sydney Nightlife and Creative Sector Advisory Panel, has felt the change. “As devastating as the impacts of Covid have been on the music industry as a whole, we’ve seen several different industries and avenues of people who were competitors working together to convey to government the extent of the impact of the pandemic on their businesses, and express the need for support.” 

“It’s part of the maturation of any industry: the capacity to look beyond competition and to prioritise collaboration.”

Particularly important in that process has been the swift and ongoing collection of data through surveys. When gatherings of over 500 people were banned in March, the I Lost My Gig survey was launched within 18 hours. 24 hours later the survey had recorded 25 million dollars in lost income due to cancelled events, and by May, that figure was 340 million. “That survey had a really big impact on the creative industry’s ability to articulate its needs,” says Collins, who has spent most of her year orchestrating subsequent surveys and seeking case studies in order to keep the government informed. “Being able to put figures on these things is just so powerful – it helps organisations like mine to tell the story of what’s going on in the sector.”

Collins cites the recently launched Save our Stages campaign as another strong example of the industry marshalling itself. “The campaign is supported by more than 60 venues, who are essentially all competitors who have joined forces to plead to the government for support. It’s been fascinating and rewarding to see industries coming together and working on a shared vision for what the state can be. It’s part of the maturation of any industry: the capacity to look beyond competition and to prioritise collaboration.”

Tenacity, time and timing 

The persistence of Sydney’s nightlife advocates would mean little without an inescapable and essential ingredient: time. In 2018, Sydney Morning Herald reported 176 venues had closed since the Lockout Laws were introduced. The following year a Deloitte Access Economics Report estimated the laws had cost Sydney around $16 billion in lost revenue. By the end of 2019 no one in Sydney could plausibly deny that Sydney’s nighttime economy was embarrassingly underperforming. “The effects over the years were palpable,” Tyson Koh remarks.  “And the people who were complaining about Sydney’s lack of vibrancy crossed political and generational lines.” 

The timing feels cruel, but at least the pandemic has arrived when the government is ready to listen. The unpredictability of 2020 has also given industry organisations unprecedented access to government ears. “There has been much more discussion and dialogue [with the government] due to the fast changing nature of things,” explains Emily Collins. “We are getting a regular audience when previously we wouldn’t have had such luck.”

It’s also becoming apparent that the nightlife industry’s recovery is intrinsic to the city’s wider economic recovery, as the government looks for ways to safely increase inner city foot traffic and spending. Indeed many strategies to bolster the industry in the long term can also be leveraged to aid it in the context of COVID-19 restrictions, as outlined in multiple chapters of the Global Nighttime Recovery Plan (GNRP) – an internationally collaborative guide hosted on nighttime.org, to aid cities in safely reopening and strengthening their nighttime offering during and post-COVID. 

“It’s becoming apparent that the nightlife industry’s recovery is intrinsic to the city’s wider economic recovery, as the government looks for ways to safely increase inner city foot traffic and spending.”

Reducing barriers to venues gaining pavement licenses and late-opening licenses, for example, is crucial to maintaining physical distancing, using both spatial and temporal advantages of the city to increase capacity and profit margins for hospitality industries, whilst encouraging people back into the city centre to support adjacent businesses too. At City of Sydney, things are now moving at “100 miles an hour” towards these goals, says Libby Harris in preparation for Sydney’s first pandemic summer. Indeed the GNRP’s third chapter features Sydney as “an encouraging example” and “now at the forefront of global 24-hour city visioning, planning, data and impact evaluation”.

Meanwhile, the government is in the process of hiring for a full time position tasked with liaising between state government, local government and private industry stakeholders to ensure its 24 Hour Strategy doesn’t simply collect dust on a shelf. At long last, Sydney is effectively getting its own night mayor, though the successful applicant won’t have the evocative title of “Night Mayor” or “Night Czar” conferred on similar positions in cities like Amsterdam, New York or London. Instead, Sydney will soon salute a “Coordinator General of the 24 Hour Economy Strategy”. Catchy. 

Healing Sydney’s “identity crisis”

The future of Sydney nightlife now rests in our well sanitised hands. We owe it to the business owners frantically pivoting their way towards new revenue streams, new licenses and new entertainment ideas to get off the couch and experience Sydney’s nightlife in this strange new context. We owe it to the business owners elbow deep in grant and support applications, who cannot open at all right now, to prove there is and will be an appetite for their offering once restrictions are relaxed. And we owe it to ourselves to enjoy some good news and good times when they come to us. 

When asked about their hopes for next year, City of Sydney’s Libby Harris, Keep Sydney Open’s Tyson Koh and Music NSW’s Emily Collins all shared a similar vision. 

“If all we talk about is booze and violence, that’s all we’re ever going to get,” says Harris. “I hope people will look at our vision for a more cultural and creative city at night and say, ‘yeah – we want that!’”

“No one needs more convincing that Sydney’s vibrancy can bounce back than Sydneysiders themselves,”

“This is a city that too often talks itself down as somewhere that isn’t about culture and nightlife,” says Collins. “But what we have seen recently is that Sydney does actually show up for the Arts – there is a strong community sentiment about supporting these things. Sydney needs to get past its identity crisis, and Covid is an opportunity for a mindset shift. We live in an incredible city and I’d love its narrative to be more about the great things it has to offer than about the things that it doesn’t.”

“No one needs more convincing that Sydney’s vibrancy can bounce back than Sydneysiders themselves,” Koh echoes. “But whether it does or not is completely up to us. Up to us to go out, attend events, go to restaurants. It’s up to us to start businesses if we have a sound plan or an idea to rejuvenate much-loved precincts. And the government has a responsibility to enact the strategy that they devised; there’s a mutual obligation to make sure that the nighttime economy doesn’t fall by the wayside.”

Many challenges for the industry are still to come but, thanks to the sustained and increasingly well organised efforts of nightlife advocates across the industry, the community and local councils, the New South Wales State Government has, finally, come to the party on nightlife. So will you?

Update – In the weeks following this article’s release, the Liquor Amendment (24 Hour Economy) Bill passed through New South Wales State Parliament’s lower house, overhauling more than 600 pieces of antiquated legislation relating to liquor licensing, development consents and live music restrictions, in what is being described as a “monumental change” in favour of nightlife venues and performance industries.

Our Features section publishes exclusive original content created by nighttime.org associates, going deeper into global COVID-19 response strategies and scene perspectives by drawing on our international network of night mayors, nightlife advocates and industry stakeholders for comment. 

If you would like to contribute, contact hello@vibe-lab.org with your pitch. 

The post The first battle for Sydney nightlife has been won appeared first on NIGHTTIME.ORG.