16th April 2026
Following on from some reflections on how Local Authorities are trying to hold a shared picture across multiple strands of activity, it’s clear that the same challenge plays out across the Night-Time economy.
The sector is operating under increasing pressure.
Rising costs, planning constraints, shifting demand and a constant need to demonstrate value – all while continuing to deliver the spaces that bring people together.
Conversations with people like Michael Kill highlight just how coordinated that response needs to be, not just venue by venue, but across towns and cities as a whole.
Because in practice, venues don’t operate in isolation.
They sit within a wider ecosystem that shapes footfall, demand, policing, transport and ultimately viability.
Which brings us back to some familiar questions:
What’s happening?
Where is it happening?
When is it taking place?
And how does that connect across a town or city?
But also:
What else is competing for the same audience, infrastructure or attention?
Where are the pinch points – and where are the opportunities to collaborate?
And who needs to see that picture to act on it?
This isn’t just a Local Authority challenge – it’s a shared one across sectors.
And it becomes even more visible in cities, where multiple layers of activity are happening simultaneously across the same spaces.
The National Events Database is a simple way of making that ecosystem more visible in time and place – what’s happening, where and when.
Not as another layer of reporting, but as shared infrastructure that helps everyone see the same picture.
If you’re operating in the night-time economy, I’d be interested to understand whether this kind of shared visibility would help – and what it would need to show to be genuinely useful?
