Index’s new student night has been subject to controversy among DJ collectives and grassroots movements - Charlie Kennedy investigates.
In September this year, Index announced the launch of their new student night titled Loose Ends, a weekly event taking place in their residence of The Academy. The night is centred around affordability, boasting average drink deals and an impressively cheap entry fee. There is an emphasis on ‘headline heroes’ as well as local talent spinning the records, and there have been some notable names to play thus far, including Cody Wong and Bushbaby. While this sounds like an unproblematic, student-friendly fixture of dance and music culture in Dublin, there has been controversy stirring among the student-run DJ collectives and grassroots movements of the city’s universities; calling Loose Ends a shoddy money grab, taking the job of DJ collectives away from them via Index’s sheer influence on the dance music scene, all under the flag of ‘by students, for students’.
It's understandable that so many people are denouncing this endeavour, considering the amount of student nights that are actually ‘for students, by students’, run by collectives including Echo Exchange, Starlight Project, (ART)IFICIAL, not to mention the university DJ societies (UCDDJ, DUDJ, TUDDJ, etc.) Among these student nights stands Loose Ends, the outlier, a businessman among students, dressed in chinos and puffing off a vape he ‘modified himself’, and won’t stop telling you how much better it is than disposable vapes.
Index isn’t a newcomer onto the nightlife scene. District 8 has been a name on the dance and electronic music scene since 2014, originally operating from the historic Tivoli Theatre on Francis Street, which was demolished in 2019 to make way for a hotel. Index as a club has been run by District 8 since 2017, and has had a turbulent history involving many changes in residency – Index has homed itself in the Voodoo Lounge (also now demolished), and Opium, before moving to The Academy at the beginning of this year, where it remains.
In discussion with a DJ from a known collective, who chose to remain anonymous, we spoke of Loose Ends. I wanted to know the general consensus of DJs and societies on this new student night, and what the implications could be for grassroots movements around the city. They mentioned the time, money and energy that goes into running an independent collective – organizing events, marketing, sorting out venues, and so on, all alongside the pressure of doing so consistently, so as to maintain relevance and not fall into obscurity. Index then comes along with all the money they could want, and sets up a student night which is marketed as being run ‘by students’.
Which it isn’t – it’s corporate funding, more funding than any collective could ever wish for. This was dirty branding, and it was mentioned in the discussion that the insincere branding was one of, if not the, biggest source of outrage after the announcement. Another implication was that, if a collective decides to host an event on a Thursday, they will be in direct competition with Loose Ends for crowds. This is inherently a company taking business away from students, looking at it economically.
Another DJ I interviewed mentioned how Loose Ends is giving DJs an opportunity to break out of the underground and give themselves a name outside of a scene which can be niche. Index is one of the biggest clubs in the country – if a DJ is offered a gig for the night and they turn it down, they are only fouling themselves. Both DJs I spoke to said it is too soon to say if Loose Ends is a good thing or a bad thing, and as with everything, comes with positives and negatives. It is important to note that TUDDJ collaborated with Loose Ends for an event night at the beginning of October, so it is unfair to say that Index have been completely negligent of the student-run societies.
Despite the controversy and my analogies aimed at it, it is doubtful that anyone, including the collectives and societies, believe that Loose Ends is an entirely bad thing. Of course, the night has only been running so long (just a month at the time of writing), so a lot remains to be seen.
In a since deleted Instagram comment, Loose Ends wrote that “giving students an option beyond the usual is our aim”, which the night essentially does. The ethics of the branding can be questioned, but at the end of the day it is a new student night in a club with one of the best sound-systems in the country. The announcement of a new student night is inherently a good thing – more people going out benefits so many aspects of the city, it becomes safer and more friendly, and the nighttime economy is given a chance to perform better than it has in the previous years.