TOOL: Survey Your Scene

read: 3 minutes

Why Survey Your Scene?

The global impact of COVID-19 has changed the nighttime industry landscape almost instantly. Event cancellations and postponements, and the closure of bars, clubs, restaurants, concert venues, and other cultural and community spaces are having unprecedented effect on the nightlife, hospitality and adjacent creative industries. Millions of freelancers, part-time and gig workers, artists, and contractors have been stripped of their usual means of income, indefinitely.

Gathering information on lost work, opportunities, and revenue streams is crucial in helping policymakers understand exactly how these closures and cancellations have impacted businesses, communities, and livelihoods—so they can provide informed support that leaves no one in the industry behind.

We at nighttime.org want to enable communication and provide support which makes it easy for you to take action to protect your scene, now and in the future. 

Nightlife advocates, organizers, and leaders: Download the survey template from the following links, and customize it for your city. Feel free to add questions that help you best support your city and scene, but we ask that you keep the existing survey questions as close to the template as possible, to enable comparison of anonymised data later on. Please reach out with questions, comments, or feedback to diana@vibe-lab.org. We are all learning from work in local scenes worldwide.

This survey template was originally created by the Office of Nightlife at the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, and adapted by the Los Angeles Nightlife Alliance. Special thanks to Andreina Seijas, MTL 24/24, NIX Madrid, Timo Koch, and Humboldt Foundation Chancellor Fellows for survey preparation and translation support.

Survey Templates

Survey for Nightlife Workers, Freelancers, Businesses and Patrons Impacted by COVID-19
English: template link | view-only link
Spanish: template link | view-only link
Brazilian Portuguese: template link | view-only link
French: template link | view-only link (via MTL 24/24)
German: template link | view-only link
Need support in another language? Email us and we’ll see what we can do.

How To Use This Tool

  1. Open the Google Form in your selected language above.
  2. Make a Copy: In the top right bar, click the three-dots icon next to “Send” to open a menu. Select “Make A Copy.” 
  3. Name the File and Survey. Change your document’s file name and survey name. 
  4. Upload Logo and Select Theme. (Optional) Click the paint palette icon to open “Theme Options,” and using “Choose Image,” upload your organization’s logo to use as a header, and/or adapt the survey “theme” to desire colors/look.
  5. Adapt the survey text to your locality. The beginning of each section has placeholder text for you to update for your city or scene. We suggest updating the currency, inserting city-specific options (neighborhoods, ZIP codes, etc) for “locations of cancelled events/gigs/work,” and inserting your organization name into the final question.
  6. Preview and test your survey. The “Send” button will bring up sharing options; the middle icon will display a shareable link, where you’ll see how your survey will appear to others. 
  7. Fill out a “test” survey to check for any errors, do one last proofread, and make sure everything works correctly. Please report any errors in the template to diana@vibe-lab.org.
  8. Deadline: Optional: If you decide to set a deadline for responses, note it in the survey text and on all materials sharing the survey.
  9. Publicize your survey! Share with your scene via: 
    1. Your organization’s or personal social media
    2. Local Facebook or COVID-19 mutual aid groups
    3. Ask local leaders in your scene—venues, collectives, artists—to signal-boost.
    4. Submit it to local or national resource compilations that serves your community (ex: in the US, the COVID-19 & Freelance Artists guide (https://covid19freelanceartistresource.wordpress.com/). 
    5. NOTE: Be sure you are sharing the correct link for respondents, not the ‘edit’ link!
  10. Keep us posted. Email a survey link to diana@vibe-lab.org. In the coming days, we’ll be launching a resource to keep track of parallel surveys, and ways to share learnings with one another. Stay tuned.