Free parties are the new city-centre superclubs

Illegal raves have been a fixture of British partying for decades, but figures released last week by the Metropolitan police show that in London in the past year their number nearly doubled, from 70 to 133, and events are getting bigger.

In the past few months, police have shut down parties ranging from a rave in Liverpool accessible only by an underground tunnel, to parties in a field in Berkshire and an industrial estate in West Sussex. Last year in Hounslow, west London, 1,500 people descended on a closed-down Morrisons, set up sound systems and kept going until riot police stormed the venue. These events often end with minor skirmishes. When police tried to close down an event at a disused bank in Deptford, south London, in January 2017, crowd violence caused injury to officers.

Promoters have seen the eradication of traditional clubs as a challenge. “The more clubs that close, the more the illegal scene grows; people are always going to find somewhere else to do it,” says Clair Stirling AKA Eclair Fifi, a renowned club DJ who has had shows on Radio 1 and NTS.

This movement is being led by some extremely young people. Ticket prices and a clampdown on fake IDs means legitimate clubs are completely out of reach for them. Teenage party fixers will scout out empty locations, climb in through an open window and then start spreading the news.

“You find out from word of mouth or via social media,” says Mia, an 18-year-old who has spent the past couple of years attending free parties. “The location would be released to you on the day. When I first started going it was because I was underage and I couldn’t go clubs, but it became more about the community feel of it.”

These events offer a unique kind of freedom. “It can sometimes be stressful to attend a club in London because venues are under so much pressure to make their customers behave in an orderly fashion,” says Ryan Keeling, editor of club-culture website Resident Advisor. Bouncers now perform invasive patdowns and harangue guests about keeping quiet in the smoking area. “Free parties are partly stemming from a desire to have people play by their own rules, trying to create a more liberated atmosphere.”

Having a big night shouldn’t involve unwanted groping ...

Britain’s nightclubs have been battered by closures over the past two decades, with more than half closing between 2005 and 2015. The result is a major scarcity of space, for any kind of party. And that desire for space isn’t just physical. Clubbers are increasingly concerned with creating an environment in which you don’t have to wrestle with the struggles of the day. A generation ago, if you could go to a city-centre nightclub without getting glassed in the face or frottaged by some horrible lad with a rat tail, it was a good night out, but these days people expect more from their clubbing environment than not getting molested or beaten up.

Eclair Fifi.

This can be simple things, such as ways for bartenders and bouncers to be quickly alerted to letchers. London’s night tsar, Amy Lamé, is currently consulting on a woman’s safety charter, which clubs will be able to sign up to from this year. Groups such as Girls Against have lobbied venues to take more serious action against gropers. And as a further indication of the move away from beered-up nights out, the Office for National Statistics today removed “lager sold in nightclubs” from its shopping basket of consumer goods used to measure inflation.

… and that means everyone can feel included

Safe spaces are more than being afforded basic welfare. They are also about creating nights that cater to those who might otherwise be left behind. Clubs such as Bitch, Please! in Bristol and BBZ in London – which describes itself as “centering femme identity & eradicating misogyny for queer womxn, trans folk and non-binary people of colour” – aim to further the idea of an LGBT club, to build a community rather than just a place to pull.

“I don’t think it would be too cliched to say that some parties aim to create a temporary utopia, one in which the complications and frustrations of daily life melt away,” says Keeling, who is putting on events with Bitch, Please! and Meat Free, an all-female techno collective in Manchester. “Sure, this is a form of escape but, for many people, clubs represent something more vital than that. These are independent local promoters who aim to bring together underrepresented communities.”

The afterparty can be the main event

Another big change to clubbing has been stricter licensing, meaning clubs have to close earlier to avoid disturbing neighbours. Often, illegal parties will spring up once legitimate clubs have shut for the night.

“The after-party scene in Scotland is incredible because everything shuts at three,” says Stirling. “Well, you know the Scots, they want to keep going. There’s amazing spaces, often different every week. We go to empty buildings, ones that aren’t near any houses. It’s not hurting anyone. But I shouldn’t say too much.”

Female DJs are no longer a rarity

The lack of female DJs has always been a myth, but it is true that male DJs, promoters and dance journalists have done their best to operate an old-boys’ network that has excluded female talent. As recently as 2011, the annual DJ magazine poll of top 100 DJs featured no women at all. That, says Stirling, is beginning to change.

“We’ve still got a long way to go, but I think, because of things like #MeToo and calls for more women to be on festival bills, it’s filtered down. It’s become a catalyst to push women to be like: ‘Fuck it, I’m going to do this.’” It is not just that more women are getting booked by male promoters – they are taking control of the events themselves. “It’s got a bit more DIY, a lot more girls putting on nights at places like Five Miles in Seven Sisters [in north London], and way down below the [Thames] river. I can’t really remember that three or four years ago.”

If you can’t go out, the dancefloor can come to you

One way to deal with a lack of space for clubbing is to enlarge it virtually. It has been a decade since Boiler Room started putting on tiny, guestlist-only parties for cool kids, while streaming the DJ sets online so that people could watch them from their bedroom. But now that role has been taken on by the clubbers themselves, documenting every part of their night out on Instagram Stories and broadcasting it back to their mates who decided to stay at home. However, it can leave others with the feeling that they are always being watched – especially the DJs. “A friend of mine got so sick of people coming up to him filming with their phone flashing in his eyes that now he just grabs the phone and puts it on the turntable,” says Stirling. “By the end of the night, he’s got seven or eight phones there. [Scottish DJ] Jasper James brings a torch with him and whenever a kid shines a flash in his face, he shines a torch back. I kinda like that.”

If all else fails, you can sell out to the Man



Another option for making your night out more affordable and open to all is to get Red Bull to pay for it. If you grew up losing your mind to Oakenfold somewhere off an unmarked A-road, it might seem beyond the pale to go to a club night put on by an energy drinks brand. But venues such as House of Vans or Converse’s recent hotel pop-up are often able to afford better lineups and bigger spaces than traditional clubs, and people’s desire to Instagram their evening is congruous with brands’ desire to get cool influencers to give them free advertising on social media. These days a DJ is as likely to find themselves playing the launch party of a new hatchback as they are a sweaty box at 4am.

Some people’s hedonism involves spacehoppers and ball pits

In the past few years there has been a huge boom in events that mix fake sand and £10 cocktails, such as Brixton Beach, a sort of tropical-house Butlins for south London’s gentrification crowd. A lot of this post-club clubbing appeals to a kind of infantilisation, too, with spots such as Ballie Ballerson, a bar in east London with “an adult ball pit”, and Amusement 13 in Birmingham, which has spacehoppers, a 90s games console and a soft-play area. It would be easy to dismiss these events as a novelty, but they are growing in popularity and part of a wider trend for millenials, 72% of whom would rather spend money on experiences than possessions.

In this context, all the illegal raves and LGBT nights are more than just hedonistic pursuits – they are keeping the tradition of clubbing alive in the face of a sanitised, gentrified version of nightlife that wants you to sip a £15 negroni on a giant bouncy castle while listening to the Chainsmokers.