Healing Hedonism - Insight Report - NTU - 2020 / 2021

When choosing my dissertation topic, I knew that it needed to be something to do with music as it is such a big area of my life. But as I was completing my final year of university in the height of the pandemic, I felt like I couldn’t ignore the realities of what was going on in the world. So, to keep my project timely I decided to pose the question ‘How will UK club culture recover and be reborn in a post pandemic world to reconnect us again?’. I researched expansively observing club culture on both a local and global scale. I had a variety of sources from books such as ‘Rave On’ by Matthew Collin, to documentaries like Jeremy Deller’s ‘Everybody in The Place’. I wanted to hear first-hand from music and clubbing enthusiasts the impact the pandemic was having on them. So I collected a large survey response from a variety of age groups, interviewed producers and artists and observed people’s music listening behaviour. My research was split into 4 key pillars – ‘divided nation’ which looked more at the political side and the division and tension the pandemic had caused in society. ‘Community vs commercial’ looked at the return to a more local approach as small communities in the industry banded together. ‘Genre fluid’ was all about the death of subcultures and how music listening was becoming more about mood and self-discovery. Finally, ‘spiritual awakening’ explored music as a tool for therapy and how raving can be linked to religion. I then refined this research down to key insights using it to generate ideas for how I could reinvent the clubbing industry. I tested a variety of ideas with my consumer but decided to focus on changing the narrative that raves have to be all about drugs or alcohol. Instead incorporating wellness and self-discovery through a therapeutic experience. At the next stage of the project, I would bring my idea to life visualising my brand and outcomes.