Why is it important to embrace the words ‘Night Culture’?
Nighttime offers a unique learning opportunity. Clubbing represents the act of visiting and gathering socially at nightclubs (discotheques, discos, or just clubs) and festivals, connecting individuals, fostering unity. Making space for visual and auditory art forms and self-identity. It provides a very rare experience of catharsis and a meeting of the minds. Likewise, clubs are more than dark spaces with music. They are social gathering centers, second homes, and spaces for creative thinking, cultural creation and freedom of expression.
The language we use and the narratives we build around phenomena shape the spaces – both physical and abstract – that they inhabit. Night Culture, inherently inclusive and intersectional, strives to move beyond outdated perceptions and terminologies, welcoming new forms of thinking and new perspectives. Reframing is the process of shifting a negative belief about something into a positive one using positive vocabulary. In this case, the words remain more or less the same, but it is the meaning we attach to them that must slowly change. Let’s reformulate our outlook!
In Clubbing coming as one is key: rhythm, groove, music, and community. It’s about forging connections: with the music, with others, and with oneself. Clubs are places to release, contrary to popular belief they provide a safe space, a meditative space, a collaborative space. On the dance floor you can be truly yourself, or any shade of yourself. You don’t need to justify anything, nobody will ask, you just need to be there for the music.
Reframing Nightlife or Clubbing into the paired words Night Culture is a difficult skill to master, but it’s worth it. Because associating the word ‘culture’ with everything that competes with the night, means shifting it into a positive description. Here the challenge is to take the negative words and behaviours used to describe that particular darkness, drugs-related criminality hovering around the nightlife, to reframe it into a totally normal thing. The night culture has been part of our history from the ballrooms of the 1800s to today’s raves and clubs.
We need to look at the dance floor as the space for creating a community that is almost always different in terms of the people who attend it, but always the same in terms of its ability to reach a common empathy. People enjoy themselves, make friends, open up to random strangers, and share their stories and individuality collectively as they move in unison.
Choosing a better word can prevent us from being confined by stereotypes. Night Culture, for instance, has the power to reshape our outlook for the better. Reframing is a tool that can help us to change our mindset only due to the fact that we switch our words or the meaning we always thought that they had.
More about the project
Night Culture Nieuw-West is a new collaborative experience between all the clubs located in the area of Nieuw-West. A series of round tables that we are holding to exchange ideas and experiences, to build a community of night in our neighbourhood. All the initiatives are a tribute to Night Culture. Please read more about the upcoming event, and sign up for free right here!
