Night Time Industries Annual Summit Overview
Updated: Feb 13
The event mentioned in our recent mailout last month regarding the Nighttime Industries Association Annual Summit took place this last week.
With talks from record labels, events promoters, councils, licensing, security, artists and nighttime economy advisors, artists, therapists and various safety initiatives, it fuelled talks surrounding the impact of the various industries which operate throughout the night and it's significant influence on our economy.
Gone are the days where the standard routine operates on a daily 9-5 basis. This creates a claim to see that not only the NTIA's impact suggest a need for a dedicated structure within the UK's operations but also the view and approach that means we can embed a system that transpires into a daytime 24 hour operating country which maintains its culture, heritage and value as the world's economy evolves.
The event was introduced by Night Czar, Amy Lame who's role it is to ensure London thrives as a 24 hour operating capital city. Despite previous claims she was pressured to quit, her opening talk clearly presented she was standing for a strong economy with a reflection on the impact the pandemic has had and how well we have recovered, despite having still a long way to go.
A night czar role is working to keep the capital safe, vibrant and diverse at night. As a front government operating role her stance was steady and meaningful. Actually, a reassuring voice within our country's operating structure.
Talks by Harvey Goldsmith, a renowned promoter from huge international concerts and gigs to charity events including Princes Trust and Teenage Cancer Trust, alongside Sacha Lord, Warehouse Project and Park Life Founder, also Nighttime Economy Advisor, both spoke about the need for VAT relief on businesses as well as fair marketing and distribution of talent, supporting grassroots venues and events.
The impact that the operating businesses at night are so influential on our country's economy, this event is key to understanding our economic operations (and policies) and how these heavily impact our relations with other countries.
As we know, the electronic music scene is a significant part of our culture, heritage and relationship with arts and creativity. When we see how the UK has such incredible talent, we need to take in upon ourselves to take pride in this and recognise the impact it has - as a scene alone - but as a key part to our structure in working operations across the UK and the world.
Music and entertainment are historically more night time activities but as technology has evolved, travel and tourism has expanded, access is enabled to wider opportunities, across cultures and around the world, making trading, consumption and relations more readily opportune and complex than ever before.
In an interview with Michael Kill CEO of NTIA, Sacha Lord and Dawn Dines (Stamp Out Spiking) we had in depth conversation about the need for a change in government attitude, the need for more awareness around nighttime culture and legislation, representation of national, regional and local areas to report back and represent their scene to see how we can effectively operate in a collaborative way across the UK. There was suggestion of how we should create a roadmap to ensure a consistent approach for fairer and safer working strategies, from making spiking an invisible offence which may seem trivial but in actual cases the number of spiking incidents, some leading to rape, has not been fairly dealt with or reported because there hasn't been a practical solution to resolving this in our current legislation.
Dawn Dines explained how cases go unreported because quite often the substances used are non traceable after just a few hours. Suggestions of how policing time is not spent on investigating these cases with a lack of resolution for a perpetrator, means that more needs to be done, from awareness in prevention to implementing stronger sanctions. Whilst currently the law holds a 10 year sentence, Dawn has been pushing for Stamp Out Spiking for a number of years and with the support of NTIA and its collaborative approach to connection, communication and awareness there is more voice and impact in making a shift to dealing with these unnoticed offences and perhaps then, other laws.
Sign the petition here for Stamp Out Spiking to support the push for making this offence noticed. Also the NTIA have are drafted letter to automatically upload for your specific area here. We need to keep each other safe.
Representation from various people across the UK in a panel talking about Four Nations Approach to the industry; Mike Grieve, founder of Sub Club, Glasgow, Ben Newby (NTIA Wales), Boyd Sector (Free The Night, Belfast) Sunil Sharpe (DJ/artist, Dublin) and Meike LeCoultre (Arts and Culture, City of Amsterdam) represented EU and UK based conversation towards the night time economy. The overall suggestion here was that the EU and UK have the need to work collaboratively for an overall better approach to trade and relations to ensure a smoother system as the music scene, particularly, is shared across countries. Current obstacles that are in place with Brexit, impact touring for musicians.
Lyndsay McIntyre from KSG Acoustics stated how the rules around time spent in the Schengen zone – non-Schengen residents can only spend 90 out of every 180 consecutive days in Schengen countries. Often industry tours are more intense than this, where they are having to cancel tour dates, tour second staff, send staff out the Schengen zone between dates. All of which are costing a fortune during pandemic recovery.
It seems a challenge getting the balance between being an environmentally sustainable economy and bringing trade to a level of consumption that we have always been used to, following lockdowns.
Throughout the lockdowns, we have seen the impact of nature revive itself, lower carbon emission and less pollution, less noise and more balance in nature but as businesses are returning/recovering from the pandemic, operating structures have been evidential in increased health concerns. With striking meaning shortages of public sector services, the stress and business operations have impacted on the night time economy also. As a result the event was held during National Tinnitus Awareness Week, bringing more attention to the the need for wider awareness and understanding of the impact of global business operations on our health, well being and the planet means that so much activity around us can lead to lower levels of focus, awareness, concentration and in turn perceived as something we need to consider to infuse our economy with a more holistic approach to operations AND environmental sustainability.
Michael Kill quoted that (his) children are the voices of the future and if we act without considering this then we aren't being responsible in business.