TD 1
MMD: “Renn, what are your own personal experience
s of night-time culture and interventions you are trying to do?” RM: “When we started Origins Eile in 2018, it was a black queer organisation aiming to amplify joy. We’d seen the model of BBZ London and Pussy Palace working there and my friend Ivan was like, ‘be the change you want to see’. What I found was when I ended up DJing in more regular spaces, the audience who would come would see my face on the poster and expect it to be r’n’b and hip hop. What ended up happening is a silo where I’d really want black queer techno music and there wasn’t that space being given. We did a series of DJ workshops and working with minoritized community, you are dealing with emotions and trauma which we wanted to carve out a space for it to be heard and healed. “We went around to a number of venues and it was nearly like a closed door policy. Security is often the first point of contact and back in 2019 on one first club night we did 300 people weren’t able to come in and we were like, ‘why it is so quiet, we’re meant to be sold out?’ It was due to the racism of the security guard turning people away. My battle at the moment is trying to diversify different spaces. Also, we have the housing crisis with the community being pushed further away. It seems easier to have the conversation though post BLM. Unfortunately, I still have to give examples that have happened in the UK and that irks me still. We are still a new country and if we are always constantly looking over to the other side then what we are replicating is something that doesn’t always fit this land. There’s so much possibilities with this version of Ireland. Let’s do it our way.” MMD: “Speaking of the other side, Carly perhaps you have some thoughts and observations on what you have heard so far and can enlighten us about how progressive Bristol is in many ways.” CH: “I feel constantly grateful that I live in Bristol and we do what we do as a nighttime community. I put my first party on when I was 13 so I’ve always existed in night-time. When I moved to Bristol in 2004, I didn’t like paying to get in so I started flyering, standing outside until 3 o’clock in the morning for the best part of a decade. In that time, we have seen lots of venues close. Our biggest venue is only 3000, but most are 200, 300, 400 capacity so they are still quite compact. I’ve put on thousands of parties in my time, from dubstep to jungle to ghetto tech, all sorts of underground dance music and other sorts too. I see us as night time providers, we set the mood, we set the tone. Where you are not at work, you are in the night-time economy which is so essential for the cohesion of cities. It’s where we come together as a community, where we go to see people and explore ourselves and enjoy ourselves. It is really vital for a city to have that personality and be able to connect with the other people who live within your environment. “I see my job as trying to look after the workforce and elevate what the Nighttime economy is about, so I have a broader definition and don’t just see it as clubs, pubs, bars, restaurants, students falling out of kebab shops at 3am in the morning and 26 anti-social behaviour. The city shouldn’t stop at six o’clock. You should be able to navigate 24 hours a day within the city. 30% of our population work from 6pm to 6am if you include social care, transportation, 24 hour call centres, late night retail. People work after dark and if your lunch break is one o’clock in the morning, you should be able to get a decent meal. You should have mental health provision and be able to get to work safely and not have to deal with things like sexual harassment when you work behind a bar. There is a lot of things night time workers have to suffer and deal with and my job is to elevate our purpose and make sure we are looked after. “I’ve only been in the role since April of last year but some of the work I have been doing includes launching a city-wide spiking campaign, not to try and spike people cause that would be a bit crap! We recognise it is a problem that is not reported as much as it should be or taken as seriously as it should be by the police. We came together as a partnership across 150 venues that are working in the campaign. Every single venue in Bristol has testing kits behind the bar so if you think your drink has been spiked, you can go to the bar and they will test it there and then to see if there’s anything in it. We also have urine testing kits to help with early triage work and trained 157 bars worth of people to look out for people who might be in a vulnerable situation. If you have a night-time advisor you can collaborate as a city to look after your patrons and show that we can be responsible operators. We’ve also launched a women’s safety charter with all the venues signed up. I have an ambition to train 1000 night-time workers in spotting sexual harassment inside their venues and working within that level of inter-sectionality so whether you are queer, a person of colour or have different access needs, how does harassment impact on you and how can we create safer spaces across the city with zero tolerance. I fully believe night-time is something to be celebrated and something we can come together to solve some of the more problematic issues in our society. You should be able to let your hair down after dark. MMD: “One thing you told me about last night is the monthly drop in for testing drugs and the vital spill off elements.” CH: “We have The Loop in Bristol which is a nationally recognised drug check-in service run by the excellent Fiona Measham who is a doctor out of Liverpool University. We have a monthly service so for any drugs you might have, you can drop off a sample of them. They will check them to see if you’ve been sold what you think you’ve been sold. Nine times out of ten there’s been some nasty things put into the mix of these drugs. We’ve found drugs with plaster of paris in them, people think they are taking one thing and they are taking something else entirely. When people bring these samples through the service it is often the first time they have had a conversation with a professional about their usage, about their habits whether they are on anti-depressants, their sex and weight and age, whether they take insulin. How those drugs may react and if they choose to take recreational drugs what is a safe dosage? If something goes wrong what do they do, and