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The collective digitising the nightclub

Animations by VAJ.Power

Glasgow – Audio-visual collective VAJ.Power is now putting on club nights and workshops that sit at the intersection between digital art and music.

Launched by animators and promoters Holly McGowan and Sofya Staune, VAJ.Power provides nightclubs with 3D visual art, or VJing, defined by the duo as ‘like DJing but with visuals’. Now, the collective is expanding with its own educational events that challenge the traditional hedonistic nightclub experience.

The >Fuse events are focused on learning and include night-time 3D animation and VJing workshops. Attendees can then show their new skills during the collective’s club nights. Described as ‘conscious clubbing’, >Fuse operates a safe space policy. ‘This should not be a temporary feature, but rebuilt in the venue as a way of restructuring our ideas of gender,’ the duo told It’s Nice That.

Innovators in the nightlife industry are using digital technology to provide multi-sensory experiences. For more, read our Nightlife Market.

Gail’s Bakery repurposes leftover bread

Waste Bread by Gail's Bakery, UK

UK – The bakery chain will soon sell Waste Bread, a new product created from its surplus loaves and sold at a commercial scale.

Beginning in mid-October, Gail’s Bakery will be the first chain to produce sourdough loaves made from old bread. Leftovers are turned into a thick porridge-like paste, which is then added into a sourdough mix and baked to become Waste Bread, with each loaf having its own distinctive taste.

The launch is part of a commitment by Gail’s to sustainability and reduction of food waste. Although the bakery produces small batches and donates leftover food to local charities, the Waste Bread offers a chance for the chain to demonstrate itself as a food innovator.

Another way of advancing the concept of Trash-to-Table and making use of excessive bread waste is to turn breadcrumbs into beer, a process pioneered by Toast Ale.

Facebook tests its swipe-free dating service

Colombia – The social network has begun a country-wide test of its long-awaited Dating feature.

Users of Dating must create a new profile that exists separately from their main Facebook profile, providing information such as their height, religious beliefs and number of children, while also answering a number of ice-breaker questions.

Moving away from the swiping functionality that has come to define several dating apps, Facebook instead uses an algorithm that takes into account mutual friends and common interests to match potential dates. The service works in a similar way to Hinge, a dating app that also eschews swiping and uses in-depth profiles to match people based on personality rather than just appearance.

Finding themselves mindlessly swiping either through boredom or for the purpose of personal reassurance, some consumers have been turning away from dating platforms, moving their liaisons to social apps such as Instagram. Facebook Dating hopes to capitalise on this shift by providing a more mature alternative to today’s dating apps.

Facebook Dating

Condé Nast opens a beauty studio

Condé Nast Beauty Studio, New York

New York – The media brand has opened the Beauty Studio, a space that allows businesses to produce editorial beauty content.

The space, located in Condé Nast’s 1 World Trade Center office, provides clients with the facilities they need to create high-quality photographic and video content for use by the media company’s platforms and publications. Condé Nast says it reaches more than 240m consumers monthly across its social channels, and its videos average over one billion views a month, so the content will be largely optimised for social media.

The Beauty Studio will also offer end-to-end services such as creative ideation, strategic planning, and access to young influencers and producers. ‘Partners can now access our stable of creative, talented editors and reach an audience of engaged users looking for inspiration and recommendations from a trusted source – our brands,’ says Celia Ellenberg, Vogue beauty director and co-leader of the space.

Fashion and media publications are increasingly entering the beauty sector. Just last month, Gucci and Dazed Media both launched beauty verticals through Instagram.

Stat: Latinx consumers are driving smart device listening

Nielsen’s latest study into the music habits of Latinx consumers in the US found that music is thoroughly ingrained in their daily lives. According to the study, Latinx spend 32 hours a week listening to music, more than the average US listener. Furthermore, 45% subscribe to a streaming service for music, radio and podcasts, outpacing 40% of non-Hispanic whites.

These consumers are also welcoming new technology that enhances their listening experience. More than one in five Latinx households own a smart speaker, and 58% want to buy one in the future – 16% higher than the total US population.

Latinx consumers provide an untapped opportunity for companies producing smart home technology, with these brands having to consider the importance of music in their day-to-day routines.

Thought-starter: Why are period products still so inaccessible?

In an era when women’s equality is high on the agenda, it is astonishing that so many are still struggling to access these basic hygiene products, says The Future Laboratory's graduate trainee Tamara Hoogeweegan.

In June 2018, architecture student Ruth Pearn presented a speculative graduation project. She envisaged an old bathhouse transformed into a public space designed to fight period poverty. This project was not designed for an emerging nation, but the UK city of Hull – a place where period poverty shouldn’t really exist.

Except that it does. And projects such as Pearn’s show how period poverty has become a major social issue in developed nations. As a first step in resolving period poverty, brands and campaigns are fighting to remove the so-called ‘pink tax’ to make sure every female has equal access to sanitary products.

But the cost of female hygiene products isn’t the only reason that women are still dealing with period poverty. The stifling stigma that persists around menstruation exacerbates the myriad social and cultural reasons that make it hard for girls to talk about it.

Read more about how your brand can eradicate period poverty here.