The Dance Floor as Our Work Floor

Within the creative city of Rotterdam, creative networks are important not only to the city but function as the foundation for the artist's career. These networks are often formed and sustained through experiences and encounters in nightlife. Over the past 10 years, Rotterdam’s nightlife scene has shrunk substantially. The declining availability of nightlife venues affects the artist’s career development as their trusted safe spaces where creative networks intersect dissolve. Yet, most scholarly attention has been on the role of artists and nightlife in regards to urban regeneration and economic growth. Therefore, this research poses the question: “How does nightlife influence the career development of artists at the beginning of their career?” This study comprises an exploration into relevant literature around the topics of creative cities and networks, the economic and social aspects of nightlife, artists and their career development and in-depth semi-structured interviews with Rotterdam based artists at the beginning of their careers. The results of the interviews were grouped based on emerging patterns guided by the relevant literature after which themes were made in relation to nightlife’s influence on the artists’ career development. The main three findings address nightlife’s influence on the artist’s career development through 1) the creation and iteration of creative networks, 2) several forms of knowledge exchange and 3) providing location bound safe spaces. Overall, it can be stated that the artists main need in regards to career development is a safe space to express and experiment in order to discover their interests and to further develop their artistic style. To enable their potential and have their creative work experienced, networks of like minded actors in the creative industries are crucial. The nocturnal safe spaces essential to unlock this potential are difficult to facilitate and sustain as nightlife venues have to do with their own subsidy plan requirements, which leave little space for uncertainty around visitor numbers. The discussion of these three main findings leaves room for suggestions on how to shape and provide these specific beneficial nocturnal spaces. However, it found that trust in such safe spaces is crucial for their existence, which is in turn shaped through regular visits of the creative communities to these experimental safe spaces.