Play First: How London’s cultural scene is being fuelled by DIY youth collectives

In the past few years (as we recovered from the impact of COVID), London has seen an exponential rise and proliferation of DIY collectives. For anyone who is embedded in the city’s creative, cultural or sports scenes, you likely will have noticed the abundance of new community groups hosting mainly IRL activity-based events, ranging from mahjong to life drawing to bird-watching and more. 

It is almost palpable, the drive and energy of young Londoners to reclaim what technological advancements and the erosion of third spaces have taken from us, and rediscover the joys of human connection. And no one knows this energy better than the founder of popular ticketing and discovery platform PLACE.

Founded by Hannah Makonnen two years ago, PLACE has been at the heart of London’s ever-evolving collective scene ever since its inception. With a focus on spotlighting hobbies and events outside of the nightlife world, Hannah and her small team carefully assemble detailed calendar roundups of everything on offer, creating a vibrant, youth-led network as a result.

We sat down with Hannah to talk about PLACE’s recent 2nd birthday party, her intention to create conversations between different practices and why these collectives are shaping the future of London’s youth culture through their DIY, wait-for-no-one attitude. 

Hey Hannah, how are you? It’s good to chat with you today. How did the birthday celebration go? 

This was the first time we brought all the collectives and their audiences together, so that was quite an undertaking. But from what I saw, everyone really enjoyed the day. 

When I first moved to London, I found it frustrating going to certain events where there was ‘stushness’. Someone came up to me at the birthday event and was like, you've created a room where it feels like I could walk up and speak to anyone. And that just made my day.

Amazing. What was your intention with the event?

PLACE was originally just an online platform aimed at bringing people together to explore their passions, but it came to a point where we felt we were ready to put on our own in-person event, bringing everyone together all under one roof. A way for our users and for the people who have been a part of the collectives to come and explore not just one thing, but a multitude of things. 

That’s always been our mission: to build an ecosystem of collectives where each one can share its audience with another. I think London can feel really vast and lonely at times. But when you start going to these different collectives, it starts to feel small, and you start to feel like you have a neighbourhood. Even though you were in West London one day and East London the next, people are going to the same kind of events. So it's a really lovely way to feel a sense of belonging.

You did a talk on Saturday about how collectives are shaping the future of youth culture in London. I'd love to know what some of the key takeaways were.

People are really creating spaces where you can be totally yourself. Let's say you're interested in live music, but you might find that space too overwhelming to be a part of for the entire night. There are events like Töpia's Homies, which is a live jam session where there is a separate section where you can just knit. And that’s really changing the way people think about cultural spaces.

For the talk, we had Harry Brown from Walk This Way, Georgia Ofiaeli from G's Selections, Farouk Alao from 858 Art Club and Flora Scott, co-founder of Five Fold, and they all shared how their collectives were born out of an unwillingness to wait for someone to say that their opinion is worthwhile listening to. Instead, they just said, ‘I'm going to create this for myself. I'm going to create this for my community.’ And as a result, brands and institutions are having to (and wanting to) pay attention.

There is a kind of freedom in just starting something yourself and being like, I'm not going to wait around for funding, I'm just going to do this myself because it's needed for my community and me.

Definitely. I asked Harry Brown from Walk This Way if someone in the room wanted to start a collective, what should they do? And he was like, you can't wait for funding because it's not there. You have to figure out a way to do it yourself. 

I relate to the collectives because I'm doing the same thing. I just started PLACE, and people have valued it. And from that value is where we're able to have strength and collective power.

And when a brand does want to get involved, what can they do to help you? 

I mean, for the birthday, we partnered with Salomon, which was amazing. They gave us an immense amount of freedom, which is the only way that we were going to partner with a brand. It had to be someone willing to understand us and not take away from the authenticity of what was happening. As soon as you start to dictate it, it’s completely transparent. Your audience is incredibly smart. So they'll see through it immediately. Instead, Salomon took notice of PLACE and enabled us to invest that back into our communities. 

What would you say makes PLACE different from other event discovery platforms? 

PLACE has no algorithm. It’s completely human-curated. When I first started, I was talking to people in the tech space, and they were like: How are you going to build your algorithm? You have to think about that. And I was just thinking, no. When you read a magazine, you're not reading an algorithm. You're reading people's opinions, people's tastes. And that's what we tried to translate here. 

I think the algorithm can put you in an echo chamber. Like with Eventbrite, you will go to a book and then get suggested 17 other book clubs. But people aren't necessarily joining a book club only to read; they're also going to meet other people. And that might be at a bowling event or while playing chess. But how are you going to access that if Instagram's showing you what you have already been going to and sending you new things that are kind of on the same line?

Whereas with PLACE, we’re going to show you the vast multitude of experiences that London has to offer. 

Just before we finish, I’d love to know how you think this is set to evolve going forward?

I see these collectives becoming powerhouses. They are already shaping culture, and it's only a matter of time before they have their own physical spaces and are synonymous with some of the existing cultural institutions. 

We no longer look to celebrities for opinions. We sometimes look to micro-influencers. But now even that is shifting, and micro-influencers are seen as a bit too commercial. So now it's like, where is the real authenticity? We're going to see these collectives creating things out of that and involving the community at the same time.

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It is platforms like Hannah’s and the collectives she promotes, where we are really seeing these shifts in youth culture take root: where it is no longer considered ‘uncool’ to play chess or do crochet; where young people are starting their own collectives without waiting for permission;  and where cultural scenes are colliding to create a melting pot of ideas, resources and people. 

The outcome of this is yet to be decided. But, as Hannah points out, it will undoubtedly have an immense impact on the creativity and cultural output that is to come. And we’re excited to watch how that plays out.