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Don’t sit at home mourning the loss of Britain’s nightclubs – go out and rave | Dan Hancox


Our nightlife isn’t universally suffering. What it needs is participation, not elegies, says freelance journalist Dan Hancox

It’s true that walking through central London in 2024 can feel like navigating a bleak, postmodern satire of the thrills of urban spontaneity: ballpit bars and escape rooms for contrived office socials; expensive, ticketed mega-events; and security guards cosplaying as cops, moving civilians on from heavily surveilled POPS, or privately-owned public spaces. Concerted campaigns by new residents of expensive apartment blocks against two late-night venues in the borough, broadly attracting “more recent migrants”, surprised her in their relentlessness – and flew under the radar in a way that the battle to save the famous superclub Fabric did not. Nightclub venue numbers are indeed down dramatically across Britain, but a disproportionate focus on the capital and large cities, where a certain amount of flux, churn and exhaustion have always characterised an ever-evolving club scene, masks the areas that are truly in danger.

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Dan Hancox