Published
Thu, Aug 5, 2021, 13:17
- Representing Give Us The Night, Sharpe is requesting a safe and swift reopening of events.
Irish DJ Sunil Sharpe has written to senior Irish politicians about their neglect of the events industry.
Sharpe, an active campaigner for positive change in Ireland's nighttime industry, has penned an open letter to Micheál Martin, the Taoiseach (or prime minister) of Ireland, Leo Varadkar, the deputy prime minister and minister for enterprise, trade and employment, and Catherine Martin, the minister for tourism, culture, arts, Gaeltacht, sport and media.
"Irish venues, nightclubs and music events are being disregarded," says Sharpe, "and more closures are certain if this continues." Speaking on behalf of Give Us The Night, an independent group lobbying for nightlife industry reform, Sharpe questions why Ireland's nighttime economy is still shut after 17 months, despite the country's high rate of vaccination. At the time of writing, Ireland has vaccinated around 60 percent of its population, and has around 1,300 new infections reported each day.
The Irish governement published a reopening strategy in April, called The Path Ahead, which hoped to reopen nightlife by June. While bars and restaurants have been allowed to open, music events, both indoor and outdoor, are still prohibited.
Sharpe, who calls the government's response to reopening, "inadequate, inflexible and lacking a basic understanding of how the industry works," has proposed a 13-point plan of action. It includes a guarantee of non-socially distanced trial events from September, a lifting of the ban on dancing and loud music, expansion of public testing services and assurances that venue closures should be a last resort measure.
The letter ends by stating that "the [nightlife] sector has struggled over decades under strict, outdated and soul-destroying regulations that have been responsible for the gradual decay and disappearance of what was once a thriving industry. All of these issues have been compounded by the pandemic."
Read an Art Of DJing feature with Sharpe here and the full letter below.
Photo credit: Michael McCudden