‘A lot of local leaders lost patience with Dublin’: Give Us The Night campaign renews the fight for a level playing field

For many years now, the Give Us The Night campaign in Ireland has advocated for licensing reform, highlighted the economic and social benefits of a diverse and vibrant night-time industry, drawn attention to the huge reduction of nightclubs and other cultural spaces, and attempted to create a context where people understood, valued and supported a night-time economy that has cultural worth, and is not merely focused on the sale of alcohol. Two of its leaders are the artists, DJs, producers and advocates for culture, Sunil Sharpe and Robbie Kitt.

As licensing reform progresses, some conservative politicians are leaning into populist and puritanical rhetoric regarding the hypothetical and unproven negative impacts of offering people more to do at night. Some publicans and their interest groups and lobbyists also appear to be demonstrating a reflex rooted in the prioritisation of the pub above everything else in Irish social life.

But for advocates of a healthier, more eclectic, more accessible nightlife culture, what remains important is that the Special Exemption Orders (SEOs) are scrapped, late-night permits are accessible to various licence holders and can be accessed by cultural venues, allowing just a small pocket of venues to open later and enhance the evening and night-time cultural offering across Ireland.

A new permit system would replace the convoluted and antiquated Special Exemption Order, an order required every time a venue wants to open after “normal” hours. The reform would allow for late bars who want to avail of the new permit to open until 2.30am, and the few nightclubs who wanted to avail of their new permit to remain open until 6am for dancing, with an option to serve alcohol until 5am. Few venues will take this up, but for the pocket that occasionally will, it will allow for a small extension in hours. This reform is not radical, and is in tune with some European countries, and more conservative than many others.

It feels that we’re driving a lot of young leaders out of the country

—  Sunil Sharpe

A new Cultural Amenity Licence would permit cultural spaces, such as galleries and theatres – avail of a licensc for an event, permitting them to sell alcohol one hour before and one hour after a performance takes place. This means that some cultural spaces that are underutilised in evening time – important in a context where cultural spaces are lacking – could offer a night-time programme, albeit rare or occasional. This proposal is not an alcohol-focused licence, but permitted where the sale of alcohol is not the sole activity in the venue, and where people are attending that venue for a separate reason, for example, an exhibition.

What would also be a great idea is if the Cultural Amenity Licence intersected with the late-night permit, meaning that, if a late-night event was programmed in a cultural venue, that venue could avail of what is available to nightclubs and late bars, creating an equal playing field, especially for those who want to go out and engage with night-time cultural activity, but aren’t so focused on that being driven by the consumption of alcohol.

Again, this is small stuff. No radical reform is being proposed, and the practical, programming and business case for a few places opening later, offering cultural programming, is obvious. It would benefit tourism, foster entrepreneurship, increase revenue for venues, create a more diverse social offering at night-time and be attractive to arts programmers.

In Anseo pub on Camden Street in Dublin, a street synonymous with nightlife in Dublin, Kitt and Sharpe discuss where their long-running campaign is at. “What we’ve been trying to show with the campaign is the loss of venue space, going from 522 nightclubs in 2001 to 85 today,” Kitt says. “Sunil found that there were over 1,200 licensed dance halls in 1952... There’s a heritage there that we’re losing through the lost access to space.

“!Something we’ve always advocated for, is access for communities, who maybe want to have a dance late at night, to publicly-funded cultural infrastructure, which largely sits unused after nine o’clock in a lot of instances. This is infrastructure that’s been invested in by the State.”

For Sharpe, the landscape of nightlife is more barren now than it was when he started advocating for reform. “As a lot of our venue space has been whittled down, one thing we’ve experienced with the campaign, sadly, is that when more people come out to support us, it’s usually when something is being taken away from them. The sense of loss leads to sadness, leads to anger, leads to a reaction.

“We’ve reached this strange intersection now, with Give Us the Night mark two, with those memories of the loss of the Tivoli, Hangar, other nightclubs around, aren’t as fresh in people’s minds. They’re certainly not with younger people, 18-19-year-olds. They only judge what’s in front of them right now. The cards they’re being dealt in terms of a cultural infrastructure offering is all they expect. But we know that we should be able to expect a lot more than that.”

Sharpe points to the trend of a dearth of venues and the commercial pressures they’re facing negatively impacting innovation. “Midweek used to be the place where you could experiment. You could get your friends together, you didn’t need to get that many people into the venue. But now the expectations on the shoulders of promoters is they need to sell out a venue. They need to have a headliner. They can’t experiment.”

As for older politicians attempting to curtail how younger people socialise, Kitt points out that “the older generation had the infrastructure”. There is no evidence to suggest that a few spaces opening for a few more hours would negatively impact the pub trade. The pub trade’s biggest competitor in terms of sales is off-licences. “We’re not trying to get in the way of or obstruct the pub industry in any kind of way,” Sharpe says.

The campaign began with a demand: give us the night. That demand is still there. For Sharpe, when people aren’t facilitated, they leave for European cities more accommodating to their needs, ideas and ambitions, “It feels that we’re driving a lot of young leaders out of the country,” Sharpe says, “Local scenes had leaders, ringleaders, had people who spearheaded scenes. What I’ve observed is a lot of the local leaders who lost patience, in Dublin for instance, quite early. They gave it three or four years, and then they’re gone.”