Last night (April 30), around 3,000 people attended the UK’s first club night without COVID restrictions since the beginning of the pandemic, packing a Liverpool warehouse with no masks or social distancing. The only requirement for entry was a negative lateral flow test, conducted the day before.
Video from the First Dance show, shared to social media by organisers Circus, shows maskless clubbers dancing to music from DJs including Jayda G and The Blessed Madonna, as well as emotional scenes from an industry that has been hit particularly hard by coronavirus.
The event was part of a two-day pilot — which will see thousands more clubbers attend the show tonight — to help monitor the spread of the virus among crowds mingling and dancing indoors. Attendees will be tested a second time five days after the night out, to determine the rate of infection.
Tomorrow, Liverpool is also set to host a non-socially distanced, maskless gig that will see 5,000 people gather in the city’s Sefton Park. As with the club night, the only requirement for entry is a negative COVID test, and the gig (headlined by Blossoms) will help monitor infection rates to prepare for the return of live music.
Other experimental coronavirus events have been taking place across Europe, largely yielding positive results. Held in December 2020, the non-socially distanced Primavera Sound festival resulted in no infection rate, and a 5,000 person gig at Barcelona’s Palau Sant Jordi concert hall provided similarly positive results after taking place in March this year.
Despite the recent success of trial events, however, the nightclub industry has a long way to go to make a full recovery post-COVID. In February, a report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Night Time Economy showed that UK nightclubs have been forced to make 51% of staff redundant since last year.
View footage from Liverpool’s latest experimental event below.