WHEN WE LOSE PLACES TO CONNECT, CULTURE SUFFERS
in times of rising loneliness, cultural spaces could be the antidote, but they’re under threat
Culture has richness and depth when we have spaces and places to explore and unite people around it. They offer access to a community or subculture where like minded people can connect through shared interests and passions.
In times of increasingly self-imposed solitude as explored in a recent article by Derek Thompson in The Atlantic, as well as the link to how teen anxiety and depression is rising with the increase in smartphone & tech usage, I believe there should be more emphasis on these cultural spaces and places providing an antidote to people who are craving meaningful connection.
These cultural spaces would all fall under what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg dubbed ‘third spaces’ and is a loose and general term for places that aren’t the home or work. When I talk and write about cultural spaces I’m often thinking as broadly as places like the barbershop to book clubs, coffee shops to markets, galleries to lifestyle leaning retail spaces. For this article I’m particularly going to be focused on the cultural spaces and places that underpin key cultural interests like music, sport and the arts.
These aren’t just places where like-minded people connect, these spaces and places are also where skills and creativity can be developed and flourish, leading to opportunities to make something for themselves and drive culture forward.
A nightclub isn’t just where you go to dance, it’s where someone sparked an interest in designing flyers and eventually led to a creative career.
A playing field isn’t just where you go for a kick around with your mates, it’s where someone will look back on as taking the first steps that helped them become a professional footballer.
A youth club isn’t just where you go to hang out and maybe listen to music with friends, it could be where someone began to make life changes that led to creating their own music.
But these cultural spaces are increasingly under threat through lack of funding and austerity cuts.
In the UK alone:
Almost 1,000 public football pitches have been lost in the UK since 2010 (GMB Union)
37% of nightclubs clubs have shut since March 2020 (The NightTime Industries Association)
Nearly 200 music venues have closed in the last two years (Music Venue Trust)
This year’s Notting Hill carnival is under threat through a lack of funding.
This isn’t the first or last article to bemoan austerity and funding cuts and the impact it has on society, but until things change it’s an issue that needs to keep being highlighted.
When we lose these spaces, we don’t just lose out on opportunities to connect and create around shared interests and passions - culture ultimately suffers. These are the places and spaces where ideas are created and expressed, talent has access to develop their craft, scenes and subcultures are formed.
We can point to the acceleration of micro trends on social media for why subcultures don’t develop in the same way as previous generations like say mod or punk did, but key to those subcultures were the places and spaces that allowed the scenes to develop. Clubs, bars, discos, youth clubs all gave people who aligned to the mod or punk way of living a place to meet and share ideas and interests from styles to sounds.
This is no different to how Hip-Hop formed and grew, how the beatnik movement gained momentum, how Acid House united football hooligans to have fun rather than fight (ok, maybe something else contributed there ;-)).
What new subcultures or movements are we missing out on or preventing from happening if they don’t have the places or spaces to help them form? Culture needs spaces to develop.
Not everything needs to happen in the discords and newsfeeds and even rich & fulfilling online communities need in person spaces and moments to keep things growing. With algorithms and platforms flattening culture and creating sameness everywhere, you have to work hard to create difference and seek out those making it. The physical environment makes culture more interesting and vibrant.
As we continue to lose these cultural spaces its impact is felt across all ages but the most severe will be for the younger generations of today and tomorrow who won’t have the opportunities or access during their most formative years.
What does the world begin to look like for younger generations in the future when they don’t have access to playing fields, youth clubs or community spaces?
The importance of cultural spaces, places and clubs
The jazz group Ezra Collective met while at a youth club and have regularly spoken about their importance, including praising youth club workers and organisations during their Mercury Prize Winner speech in 2023, while Little Simz has also repeatedly supported and opened up on the importance of St.Mary’s Youth Club in Islington.
“It’s not like there’s that much to do in the environments we grow up in, so you end up on the road. Kids are creative by nature and trying to axe their creativity at such an early age is super-detrimental.” Simz, told Elle magazine.
Youth clubs can act as an important space to develop musical talent, but the venues you eventually want to showcase that talent and make a living from it are also disappearing. The next generation of talent is being lost.
No one jumps straight to headline the O2, Madison Square Garden or Coachella. The mid-size and smaller clubs and venues are the testing ground around the country. Dua Lipa can headline sell-out global tours in places like Wembley Stadium, but it’s the smaller venues like Oslo in Hackney or The Railway in Winchester that were the early proving grounds.
Music venues and clubs have shaped generations of talent, but they’re also where people have found their tribe and created memories. They're the heartbeat of any city or town music scene and when they’re gone, we push our cities and towns to look more vanilla. Look at the impact of places like Shoom, the Hacienda, Sub Club had on culture, creating movements and creative careers.
We’ve always heard sport is a great unifier for people across all walks of life coming together over shared moments. In a fragmented media world it’s one of the last great communal activities. But sport is becoming costlier to attend live or watch elsewhere and the spaces that help develop the talent and its culture are struggling.
Sport in England can appear like we’re in boom times with the men’s and women’s national football team’s reaching European finals and in the case of the women’s team, looking to defend their European Championship this summer. The Hundred is helping a new generation follow cricket. We’re winning gold in BMX. Basketball is the fastest growing participation sport in the UK. But if you look more closely, the infrastructure and places where people can first take part and play in these sports is getting smaller or increasingly pay to play.
the role of brands
Research shows that people live healthier and more enriching lives when they’re connected to people. It seems obvious and often we need to remind ourselves of the benefit of putting the phone down and getting out there to connect with people, but access to third spaces is increasingly having a high barrier to entry. Private members clubs continue to grow with high membership fees that aim to create community but often drives exclusivity and creates a sterile and corporate environment. The increasing lack of free or low cost third spaces is going to be detrimental to culture and society.
Brands can and arguably should be supporting the places, spaces and environments where culture needs support to flourish, particularly if you’re a brand that wants to be culturally relevant.
If you’re working on or for a brand that says they participate in culture, but the output is nothing more than creating some content with some culturally relevant talent or people, then you’re barely scratching the surface. You’re adding things to shout about on LinkedIn, but not really adding anything to culture. The opportunity is there to make a genuine impact by showing up and contributing to the places and spaces that need it most.
It’s not a brand’s responsibility to reverse years of austerity cuts to funding that have contributed to a decrease in some of these spaces. However, it is your responsibility as a brand or agency that shouts the culture word from the hills to demonstrate you’re actually contributing to it, not tapping in for a quick fix to try extract value.
This isn’t a purpose tick box by throwing some money at the problem, this is a chance to create genuine impact and maybe even legacy. This is a chance to play a role in how culture lives and breathes, with your brand gaining the credibility, relevance or capital so often craved, but so seldom worked hard for.
The good thing is there are already plenty of examples to show the way where brands are making or have made a real difference to these cultural leaning third spaces down the years.
It might have closed in 2019, but the Red Bull Music Academy legacy lives on with the studios still open and no one can deny the impact it had over two decades, an incredibly long time for a brand partnership. The studio time, workshops, events and radio station all proved pivotal in giving emerging talent a platform to grow and gain exposure, while also working with and learning from more established names.
The scotch whisky brand Ballantine’s have partnered with Boiler Room with their True Music platform since 2014. As well as putting on great nights, they’ve highlighted emerging and diverse talent worldwide. During Covid, they issued £5,000 grants to 20 community-driven collectives to distribute as they felt best to support those most in need within their immediate community.
Levi’s Music Project is approaching a decade of providing access to music education and resources for young people, particularly in underserved communities. You’ll see the denim brand with big name talent like Mabel, Loyle Carner and Skepta, but they’re also working with those artists to support emerging talent and their communities, either through mentorship or creating spaces like music studios.
In sport, adidas and Stormy’z MerkyFC are creating opportunities in leadership positions in the football industry for the Black community. As part of it they turned an old run down football pitch into a fully fledged HQ for the community with incredible facilities across football pitches, music studios and games rooms. A place for community to grow.
The partnership between Aime Leon Dore and New Balance is an international friendship through basketball and they created the Sonny Youth Club after school programme, based in the NYC Masaryk Community Gym.
where to start
Whenever I speak to brands about wanting to be relevant in culture but they don’t know where to start, the answer is not as simple as throwing out some people to work with, or spaces to support. Once they’re clear on the cultural interests of their audience that the brand could credibly have a reason to contribute to, then they can start to think about the people and places they would work with. But show up expecting it to be a one way conversation and assuming you can just tap in and take some cultural capital, you’ll quickly fail.
Show up wanting to contribute to the people and places because you’re passionate about supporting where it’s needed and you’ll be starting from a good place. Consistently and credibly showing up to contribute over a long period of time and you’ll be seen as a brand that’s culturally relevant.
Any of the above cultural spaces I outlined is a good place to start for those that see culture as something to invest in for the long term, that slow culture (needs, values, interests) is just as important as fast culture (trends, moments).
For marketers and agency people saying they want to impact culture in the right way and know they need to do more than align and actually contribute and participate, there is plenty of opportunity for those that truly mean it to create a lasting impact by helping invest and tackle the problems of these cultural spaces.
Without these spaces, we’ll help accelerate the lack of connection people are feeling but we’ll also be cutting off access and opportunity for people to create and grow. Culture suffers. I’d love to see more brands understand the role these spaces play and the threat to them, so they can step up and help contribute to culture.