We spoke to the Warwick students behind access, the Leamington club night that’s gone international

They’re even hosting boat parties


'Access' formerly known as ENTER, Leamington's biggest electronic night, has gone international. The brand has just launched huge new club nights in Hong Kong and London.

We had a chat with a member of the team to find out just how they managed to make 'access' such a success.

What is Access and when did it start?

'Access' is a collective of music-lovers organising parties in 3 different locations: Leamington, London and Hong Kong. We first launched at Altoria, that has supported us since the beginning, as ENTER, but we changed our name for branding reasons. With a change of name came a change in our team, and a change in our musical direction. One of the reasons we started this event was that we found the university’s nightlife incredibly repetitive and lacking the music we love.

How do you find so many amazing DJs?

We focus on underground electronic music; anything from funk and disco all the way to techno. We try not to stay confined to a genre as our concept itself implies we will be playing a lot of different music genres. The concept of 'access' is to focus each of our nights around a city with an important music culture. We try to recreate the vibe of that city by flying in an artist from there and customising the venue to the city.

Notable nights we’ll run in the future include our Lisbon night with Xinobi! We find these artists by researching the city’s music and looking for promising rising or established artists that we think are going to be great for our crowd and who represent the city’s vibe.

How many people are in the team? Are you all from Warwick?

There are ten of us at Warwick, about five in London and another eight in Hong Kong. So there's about 23 people! The majority are from Warwick, recent grads and students, but some team members are also from Kings College, U.C.L. and grads from other unis. We’re always on the lookout for new people to help us, so drop us a message if you’re interested!

So we’ve heard that you’re expanding internationally, where exactly?

We have expanded ‘access’ to London, at Phonox, 2017 DjMag 32nd best club in the world, and Hong Kong, at Social Room. We’ve now run our first events in both cities and have more coming up soon.

Chicago night is on the 2nd of November in London and our Ibiza boat night is on the 24th of November in Hong Kong!

How did you find your new international audience?

For Hong Kong we used good old marketing, social media advertising and recruited a team of diverse people and promoters who could bring people and together make the party successful!

For London, we targeted Warwick alumni. The London music crowd is very receptive to our line-ups and university societies like the LSE Fashion Society and the UCL Electronic Music Society work with us, similar to what we’ve done here at Warwick.

When's your next big event?

We’re currently finalising the preparations of our first event at the Assembly for Halloween, happening on the 26th of October. It’s definitely the biggest event we’ve ever organised. We’ve worked very hard in collaboration with WBSS on the production of the event itself, bringing video walls on stage, with animations moving to the beat, laser beams all over the place and awesome Halloween decorations.

More importantly, the artists coming are incredibly famous and have played in clubs like Fabric London, Space Ibiza and Elrow Barcelona, at festivals like Tomorrowland, Creamfields and Eastern Electrics, have collaborated with legends like Jamie Jones, Carl Cox and Green Velvet, have released their tracks on the industry’s top labels like Hot Creations and Defected Records, have been inducted into BBC Radio 1 Pete Tong’s Dj Hall of Fame, … and the list keeps on going!

What’s your next goal?

First, we’re trying to make it where we currently are. We’ve got offers to expand to more cities which we will consider soon.

Some of our overarching goals this year are to reach a point where our audience trusts us enough to come to a night with an artist they don’t know, from a city they’ve never been to, and let themselves be carried away by it all.

What would you like to say to someone thinking of launching their own business?

Just do it!

Some people tell you to wait until you’ve finished university to focus on building your business, I would argue the exact opposite. Warwick is an incredible ecosystem made of diverse students, a micro-world of sort with sub-communities that makes it awesome practice for the real world.

Students are open-minded, ambitious and willing to work hard, an ideal group to launch an idea in and to recruit team members from. You also have access to the university’s incredible resources, like lecturers, older students with valuable professional and academic experience, and the library – all in the palms of your hands. So, get started now, take a leap of faith and don’t be afraid to fail because that's when you'll learn!

You can find out more about 'access' and keep up to date with their events on their Facebook page.