New Hastings music nights aim " to reclaim club culture"

A new music night in Hastings is aiming to help turn the tide for the country’s struggling smaller venues.

Transcript

00:00um good morning my name is phil hewitt group arts at the south six newspapers lovely to speak to

00:07mark gwinnett now mark you have got a fabulous new initiative coming up um a number of dates in

00:13hastings at the black box and it's the night bazaar presenting well tell me what are these nights

00:20they start on may the 3rd you've also got dates june 26th july 28th august 23rd it's supporting

00:28the small venues isn't it yeah absolutely i mean my platform the night bazaar it's a media platform

00:35promoting um dance music and established and up-and-coming dance music artists and djs

00:41um and i have a column in the sun newspaper which i publish every friday um and a record label

00:47called cubism alongside it so i'm well versed in you know in media and music um and um i've also

00:55been fully aware for the last few years especially post-pandemic that the the plight of the small

01:00venue venues um closing rapidly across the uk um and um you know having been in the music industry

01:09for 20 years i'm i'm you know i'm acutely aware of of the importance of small venues um you know

01:15future talents incubated in small venues and clubs and that's what this is important

01:20ages yeah what was the issue i think it's a variety of economic and um and social issues

01:29um people's people's um you know nightlife has changed changed a lot since the pandemic

01:35i think festivals have become a much bigger draw for for young people um and um and as such you know

01:44clubs clubs can't compete and they find it very difficult to to um you know to afford the fees

01:51for some of the bigger artists uh you know so we we with with the night bazaar presents black box we

01:58really wanted to bring it back down to basics and um and get some of these bigger artists back into a

02:02small capacity venue just to show that the experience of a club venue and a small venue is is is quite a

02:08profound one and i'm going to make you state the obvious why are these small venues important

02:13well the music sounds different in a small club for starters you know um the social experience is

02:19very different um we're not um and we have a no phone policy at black box uh for the for these nights

02:26so um the focus is entirely on the music it's there's not there won't be big flamboyant productions

02:32um so the experience will be much more of a of a of an intimate um experience on the dance floor

02:40but it's also about nurturing the stars of the future isn't it that's the point yes it is yeah i

02:45mean whilst we with our lineups which i can't reveal most of them yet um we will be um bringing

02:52in some big artists but uh you know moving forward we we will be offering the platform to a lot of

02:58grassroots and up-and-coming artists as well fantastic well it sounds a brilliant thing to

03:02be launching a brave thing to launch but necessary to good luck with it i hope it goes brilliantly

03:08thank you thank you very much