On the money: Loose Change’s next night will be on October 1
(Picture: Alex Atherton)From the heady basement of Dalston Superstore to the sweaty dancefloor of Heaven, London has long been a haven of LGBTQ+ nightlife and culture. But in recent times, many of the city’s iconic queer spaces have disappeared; in fact, London has lost almost 60 per cent of LGBTQ+ venues since 2006, including legendary spots from Madame Jojo’s and the Black Cap to the Joiners Arms.
Attempting to buck this troubling trend is Loose Change, a new non-profit queer club night raising money to support LGBTQ+ charities. Set up by a group of four friends in May 2022, the new “cause-centred” night has already held two sell-out events, with the third – Drop Dead Gorgeous – set to kick off the capital’s Halloween celebrations on October 1.
“We came up with the idea for Loose Change after we held a joint ‘Y2Gay’ themed birthday in Dalston”, says co-founder Matt Horwood, communications director at human rights group Liberty. “Everyone who came really enjoyed it, and the venue staff loved us and wanted us back. So we just thought: ‘why don’t we do this regularly, and for a cause we care about?’”
The group’s first two events, both held at Tipsy in Dalston, raised £1,000 and £1,200 for trans charity Gendered Intelligence and local queer service London Friend respectively.
“The feedback we’ve had so far has been so fantastic. There’s a dearth of queer venues in the capital compared to what used to exist, and there are so few queer nights that truly create spaces where all parts of our community feel welcomed,” Horwood continues.
For their third event, Halloween-themed Drop Dead Gorgeous, the group are moving to a bigger venue a few doors down at Tipsy’s new sister-site Latino Hits.
“Everyone knows queer people love Halloween, so we wanted to do something with a spooky-horror-glam feel,” Horwood says. “There are lots of events like that that already exist in London, but most of them fall at the end of the month. We wanted to give queer people as much of a chance to celebrate spooky season as possible.”
For each event, the group have chosen a different LGBTQ+ charity to fundraise for, opting this time to raise money for queer homelessness charity Stonewall Housing, which experienced a 55 per cent increase in calls to its helpline during the pandemic.
“Covid really exacerbated a lot of already existing issues for queer people living in hostile environments or facing homelessness,” explains Horwood. “For example, when sofa surfing was banned under Covid restrictions, it sent a lot of people with unstable living conditions onto the street.
“There were also spikes in street homelessness among young queer people during lockdown due to increased tensions with queer-phobic parents from being stuck at home with one another for such long periods of time.”
Drop Dead Gorgeous will host DJ sets from singer-songwriter Foxgluvv, DJ Xzan (co-founder of Brighton-based club night Gal Pals), and newcomer blacc mamba, a Scottish-Zambian hyper pop DJ.
The group have also hired a queer security firm, Safe Only, to staff the event.
“We know anecdotally that queer people are often made to feel unsafe and unwelcome by bouncers so it was really important to us that the staff on the door were welcoming and queer-friendly,” Horwood says.
The group hope to run more events in future and continue raising money for their chosen charities. “The idea is absolutely to continue running the events – we’ve got DJs lined up for the next night which will be in 2023,” says Horwood. “The four of us don’t take any money from the night and that won’t change.
“We’ll always be as good as the last night we’ve thrown - as long as they continue to be a success, we’ll continue putting them on!”
