British Wildlife Festival: Rainbow Road

Rainbow Road DJs
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British Wildlife is pleased to announce the involvement of Rainbow Road, who will be DJing on Saturday in the Brudenell - here's a quick introduction courtesy of Equilateral Blog

Back in October of last year I put on a new clubnight called Rainbow Road at the then-newly-opened Wharf Chambers cooperative, and wrote for Equilateral about some of my experiences in putting on independent clubnights. Since then the trials that Wharf Chambers has gone through with its licensing as a venue have illustrated precisely some of the problems I wrote about back then. Essentially, Leeds council have made a number of demands about how Wharf Chambers needs to change in order to hold a full private members club licence – with the right to serve alcohol, put on gigs and clubnights etc. – and for various ethical and financial reasons, the good people who organise Wharf Chambers are trying to avoid having to implement the council’s requirements. This has meant appealing against the council’s rulings and holding a campaign to get the people who have enjoyed using Wharf Chambers in the past to write in in support of that appeal. Personally I left a particularly gushing comment on the council’s website about how it was the nicest, least dangerous venue in the city centre and was run by responsible and considerate people, unlike the 95% of other venues in Leeds City Centre. No idea whether that will sway the decision of the steely-hearted bureaucrats at City Hall but it’s worth a try. The upshot of this is that things are still up in the air for Wharf Chambers, and at the moment it’s still relying on Temporary Events Licenses to put on any kind of events.
Luckily, however, they were kind enough to ask me to put on another edition of Rainbow Road using one of these Temporary Events Licenses, so on Friday of this week (tomorrow in fact), I will be playing at being a DJ with a laptop again at Wharf Chambers. We’re expecting a better turn out than last time, I think largely thanks to the decision to subtitle the event ‘Episode 2 – Taking Choco Mountain By Strategy’*. On the Saturday the 18th Wharf Chambers is also doing an all-day mini-festival kinda thing, with a range of great bands on from 2pm til late. If you’re in Leeds on Saturday afternoon I’d really suggest going down and checking that out, since entry is free before 7pm and it will be generally ace.
So, for the time being Wharf Chambers’ future as a venue is uncertain, but they’ve got some great events lined up this weekend and are certainly not giving up without a fight. Inspiring stuff.