The Future of Clubbing, Post-Lockdown
While the existential crisis facing pubs and restaurants has (understandably) been front-page news for the past year, you would be forgiven if you neglected to spare a thought for the forgotten step-children – clubs and nightlife.
In a time where simply going out of your house is the highlight of your day, going out-out seems like a far cry from the “new normal.”
Club venues have been hit some of the worst by the pandemic. Whilst pubs and restaurants were able to open to some capacity between national lockdowns, nightlife venues have largely been shut since last March.
It is clear to see the devastating impact this has had on an industry that employs tens of thousands of people up and down the country. The campaign group #savenightclubs has been lobbying on behalf of the nightlife sector since last April. In November last year the group sent an open letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, urging the government to “act now or permanently lose the country’s nightclub industry.” The group called on the government to extend business rate relief to April 2022, so that nightclubs will be able to get back on their feet throughout 2021. However, it is clear that more will need to be done to ensure that nightclubs are able to properly bounce back.
The summer of 2020 offered the smallest amount of respite for some club owners. After the first lockdown was eased in July 2020, south London’s Brixton Jamm renovated its outdoor areas to ensure guests could attend socially distanced events. The subsequent lockdowns must have been a gut-punch to these venues, who had already shelled hefty sums, only to later be told to again close their doors indefinitely.
“... these venues, who had already shelled hefty sums, only to later be told to again close their doors indefinitely”
Some club owners went more left field with their ideas to lure in partygoers still in search of euphoria. Ideas like drive-in raves have since been touted, but their popularity has yet to take off, so they remain novel ideas rather than fully-fledged solutions.
With nightclubs closed, DJs have moved their sets online in a bid to continue sharing their music with the world. Live-streamed sets have become increasingly omnipresent, with the likes of Boiler Room launching its Streaming from Isolation series, where the online music broadcaster streams hour-long sets from the homes of your favourite artists. Ross from Friends, Disclosure, Peggy Gou and Four Tet are all but a few names to have delivered sets from the comfort of their homes. The popularity of DJ live-streams on Twitch, Instagram, and YouTube clearly shows that the desire to party has not been dampened.
You only have to look at the near-weekly stories of police shutting down illegal raves up and down the country to see the lengths that some people will go to in search of the shared clubbing experience. Just this weekend, police stopped an illegal rave in Northumbria after hundreds bought tickets. This followed another story of dozens of partygoers being fined after police caught nearly 300 people at an illegal rave in Hackney.
There is no doubt that the appetite to go out-out will still be there, but with so many venues under threat of extinction, it is hard to predict what the nightlife landscape will look like, post-pandemic. With no obvious way of shifting to a different business model, the £3 billion industry faces a gloomy future.
A number of nightclubs in London have recently offered their spaces as vaccination centres as the exit plan for this pandemic takes shape. With vast open spaces, large fridges and multiple rooms for makeshift waiting areas, the government could do worse than take up this offer. Anything to get the public back raving as soon as possible is worth a shot, right?
