Chapter Six: Support models for nightlife businesses
How governments can encourage nightlife recovery, beyond financial aid.
The 6th chapter of the Global Nighttime Recovery Plan provides a clear and adaptable manual for national and local governments, outlining the variety of ways in which the state can help nighttime sectors recover from the impacts of Covid-19 which go beyond financial handouts.
Led by UK licensing barrister and longtime nightlife ally Philip Kolvin, the chapter focuses on the need for a new mindset based on creative partnership – rather than suffocating regulation, as it has been in the past.
“This means more than handing out money… It means thinking strategically, using all the levers of the state to create the conditions for revival and growth.”
– GNRP authors
The chapter walks through the key steps governments must take in order to create these conditions, which are:
- measuring the nighttime economy
- formally recognising its value
- proactively destigmatising night culture
- committing to a plan of action to support the night
- building appropriate policy to do so
- and implementing it.
Rich with global case studies to bring its information to life, Chapter 6 draws on recent examples of proactive government support for nightlife, from Berlin’s government-funded Day of Club Culture, to the Colombian government’s tax aid policy for nightlife and tourism sectors, and the London Mayoral Office’s From Good Night to Great Night vision statement.
“What I wish to see is the government normalising the concept of intervening in the interest of artists and not being a spectator. We need our governments to foster an enabling environment…”
– Eddie Hatitye, Music in Africa Foundation and GNRP interviewee.
“The nighttime sector needs more than just warm words or short-term stimulus. It needs a secure, stable and disciplined operating environment so that the entrepreneurs and creatives who make up the sector, and the investors who back them, have the platform and confidence to plan for the future.”
– GNRP authors