This summer, the Clubcommission is planning a quantitative study on Berlin’s club culture and what impact the closure of clubs and music venues, which has now lasted more than a year, has had on the expectations of audiences, staff, artists and operators. As representatives of Berlin club culture, we ask ourselves how club culture can be rethought after the pandemic in a more inclusive, just and non-discriminatory way.

The study focuses on the function of a club as a meeting place. As a temporally limited and spatially delimited space, it is used by an audience, co-created and charged with meaning. It serves as an escape from everyday life, creates its own subcultures, and allows the audience to break free from norms and control and express their personalities. Despite the enormous popularisation of clubs and nightlife in Berlin, clubs are and remain protective spaces for communities that do not conform to the ideals of mainstream society.

Club culture is not free of power relations and structural inequalities in society as a whole.

Therefore, a second research focus will be the investigation of experiences of discrimination as well as the representation of people with regard to gender, sexual identity, race, religion and ideology, disability, physical appearance, age and social status within Berlin’s club culture.

The aim is to create a representative data base on the systematics and frequency of experiences of discrimination in front of, behind and on the stages of club cultural spaces and to analyse the extent to which social diversity is reflected in the individual trades and functional groups. In addition, it will be examined which discrimination-sensitive measures are already being taken in club culture, what the obstacles are here and what can contribute to the creation of safer spaces in the future. These topics are dealt with within the framework of the Clubcommission’s Awareness Akademie project.

The research results serve to understand these inevitable changes and restructuring of club culture as an impetus for sustainable and positive change. The Clubcommission sees itself as a mediator between the interests of the audience, the operators, the staff and the artists.

Our survey is planned for the beginning of July and will be in circulation for a month before we start analysing the research results. We are then planning a publication and events to present and discuss the results of the survey.

The Clubcommission is currently looking for partners from the fields of research, politics and the media. We would appreciate any kind of support, especially in the scientific design of the research, the construction of the questionnaire and the analysis of the collected data. Research groups, university projects and academics who share our research interest can contact us at any time. It would also be helpful if you could spread the word about our call to colleagues and through your mailing lists.

Contact:
Katharin Ahrend: forschung@clubcommission.de
030 – 27 57 66 99