Horst’s Digital Lab is a multidisciplinary online event exploring the future of nightlife

From the minds behind Horst Arts & Music Festival in Belgium, the Horst Digital Lab is a multidisciplinary online program focussed on building resilient nightlife communities, taking place tomorrow, Friday 11th, to Sunday 13th December.

The Lab is a 36-hour weekender of panels, performative experiences, screenings, interviews, and DJ-sets, broadcasted from Leuven through a ticketed digital platform. Aiming to provide stimulating content about how to improve the future of nightlife amidst this unique, global opportunity to reset and reflect, the Lab is intended for anyone with an interest in the evolution of the creative industries. 

Panels include a talk with Eris Drew, Kajetan Łukomski, and Bogomir Doringer about wellbeing and community in nightlife, discussing the importance of nightclubs as spaces for human connection and self-expression. There will also be a panel which imagines the future of venue design, investigating the generic nightclub in terms of the patriarchal canon of architecture.  

The ‘Decolonising Music and Nightlife Culture’ panel hosts speakers Zelda Fitzgerald, Cornelius Harris, and other guests. It will discuss pressing challenges within the nightlife industry to imagine a positive future for Black communities, such as the reshuffling of power structures and the need to credit and remunerate the cultural roots of techno and house. 

Other performers and speakers throughout the weekend include Dee Diggs, Avtomat, and Authentically Plastic. 

Horst Arts & Music Festival 2020 was due to take place in September 2020, but has been postponed to 10th - 12th September 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Tickets to Horst’s Digital Lab cost €35 and can be purchased here. A limited number of grants are available if suffering from financial hardship. 

Find out more about the program of events here.