Empowering Nightlife Innovators: VibeLab’s NightSchool Grants €75,000 for Emerging Curators

Five of Europe’s leading nightlife specialists team up to present NightSchool: An EU wide training programme designed to support night culture producers early in their career. This transnational education programme will focus on environmental, social, and economic sustainability.

The project sets to pair nightlife visionaries spanning promoters, bookers, venue owners, to hands-on creatives with industry veterans and experts from the European culture circuit. Funded by the European Union’s Creative Europe, NightSchool will select 15 participants, providing a grant of €5,000 each. This will go towards facilitating a week of peer-learning sessions in multiple cities as well as to launching their own sustainable event ideas. Empowering individuals to turn their visions into reality is at the core of the programme.

NightSchool will offer recipients the chance to travel and engage in a sequence of face-to-face peer-learning sessions hosted by renowned experts and three distinguished European night culture venues. The programme launches with an open call to select young culture producers from across Europe. Together they will visit some of Europe’s most respected venues and learn from the best in their field.
Co-founder Mirik Milan emphasises, “Nightlife creatives and culture producers are first and foremost problem solvers. They are needed right now, more than ever to take on the unique challenges and opportunities of our rapidly evolving cultural sector.”

The micro-funding scheme (€75,000) will support the selectees in pioneering and implementing sustainability-focused night culture events across all of Europe. To complement the training and mentorship programme, NightSchool is building an online resource and hybrid platform that offers educational content to a global audience, hosted and curated by a vast network of key experts within night culture and sustainability.
A joint effort by five partnering organisations, NightSchool is a collaboration between Vibelab, Belgian club institution FUSE, Latvian culture centre Kaņepes Kultūras Centrs, Italian based creative hub BASIS Vinschgau Venost alongside their in-house event KASINO Club, and Sweden-based cultural strategy and production agency Transversal Project.

This notion of collaboration is key to the programme’s mission, as Milan further highlights: “While the term ‘community’ is frequently overused in the commercial world, its essence lies in uniting a collective of like-minded souls together. At NightSchool, we join forces to address issues of diversity, inclusivity and solidarity. As well as climate action and the ecological dimension of night culture, we provide first-hand insights on maintaining a financially sound enterprise.”

Based on three core pillars of Social Awareness, Sustainability and Entrepreneurship, NightSchool creates inclusive, safe(r) and vibrant environments that actively promote diversity, wellbeing and positive community interactions. Proudly promoting environmental sustainability whilst minimising the environmental impact of nighttime cultural activities.

Through applied practices incorporating energy efficiency, waste reduction, sustainable sourcing and reduced air travel, NightSchool explores business activities within the nighttime cultural sector covering venue management, events organisation, and curating experiences aiming to enrich their respective city’s local scene.