What have we been up to?

On Saturday 10th October, we hosted an event at Commune, Liverpool, with Seel Street Sound System. A huge thank you to Scaz for supporting us with promotion and organisation. Our residents Zaba, YEMAYA and R_TH brought everything from UKG, house, breaks and bassline to jungle, DnB and a range of singalong 140 bootlegs. We also invited the lovely Madelaine Jemine, Finno and Big Nige, who all delivered fantastic sets full of fun surprises.

It was lovely to see everyone playing and to spend more time getting to know our newer North community. We managed to raise £347.50 for Music Venue Trust between the stall and ticket sales, with 50% of ticket proceeds going to charity. Ryan from Commune was an incredible host and was so lovely to us throughout the night. We gave a few merchandise bits to some of the artists, too. And we discovered vampire BuzzBalls!

On Saturday 3rd October, we took over The Castle in London for our Space XCX night. We brought together a mix of grassroots artists, residents and ambassadors, with headliners Trakker, SiDDALL and Apollo Navigation. We had sets from Fireworks Factory, Aanka, Akira Knightley, Altered Orbit, K-SHA, L!N€S, Lvthor, Nepsis, Radulphus and Zaba all bringing their own take on the spacey chaos.

From neurofunk and DnB to jungle, techno, dubstep and everything in between, the DJs were given one simple brief: sprinkle in some bratty space energy.

The room was full of aliens, glitter, face paint and plenty of 365 virus energy, with a Beyblades tournament making an appearance too. We also brought along a special space rendition of our 100% to Music Venue Trust stall, with donations going towards supporting grassroots venues. We managed to raise £250 for MVT on the night, which we’re incredibly proud of. It was lovely seeing so many of our community get fully involved with the theme.

Big love to everyone who came down, dressed up, donated, played, danced and joined us on our intergalactic journey. 365 forever!

On Friday 25th September, we were invited by Flux Events to do a takeover set at Dream Bags Jaguar Shoes in London. We had our resident Zaba do a b2b with Helliyeh, doing a 1-v-1 challenge from neurofunk to Dancefloor DnB to jungle to a range of singalong bootlegs. We also invited the lovely Aja who played for us in August to b2b with our Ambassador K-SHA, as they delivered a fantastic opening set full of minimal and jungle surprises.

Airbender and Sober did a b2b takeover, too, which was full of twists and turns and unexpected blends. Thunda from Lava Liquid jumped on to bring some fresh bars as MC. Was lovely to see Chris and everyone playing, as well as spend some more time with our community and see resident Altered Orbit, too. We gave out a couple of our hats to some of the artists, too! Ands thanks for the frog!

On Saturday 22nd August, we were invited by Dubtendo to do a takeover set at Fox & Firkin in London, as well as run our 100% to Music Venue Trust stall. We had our resident Zaba and resident Akira Knightley down to do a b2b, playing everything from neurofunk to Dancefloor DnB to jungle to a range of singalong bootlegs.

We managed to raise £450 (wow!) for Music Venue Trust via our merch stall - which we were really proud of! After the event and our set we headed over quickly to Planet Wax to pop our heads in for the She Beats x Yamatai Records event. Was lovely to see Coco and everyone playing and spend some more time with grassroots DJs and artists in the scene. We gave out a couple of our hats to local artists, too!

On Thursday 20th August, we were invited by Lumina Events to do some takeover sets at Suki10c in Digbeth, Birmingham. We had our resident Zaba and ambassadors LXS and Aity down, playing everything from 140 to neurofunk to Dancefloor DnB to jungle to hardcore. We managed to raise £90.99 for Music Venue Trust via our merch stall - which we were really proud of! And we met lots of amazing local people who brought the energy, vibes and smiles throughout the whole night.

It was also such a pleasure to see so many of you wearing your Croakheads hats, socks and bracelets, too! A huge thank you to Energie for organising the event, and to Boogie Dave for sitting with us after the event to do a short interview, too.

At Boomtown, we handed out multiple bracelets with "Croakheads" on and our stickers to passers by and people in the crowd. Including this, we handed out leaflets that detailed statistics on small venue and small festival closure happening across the UK.

It was lovely to meet so many of you, and thank you kindly to everyone who wore our stickers around and traded them with us for trinkets in return! We hope to see you at our events! We also got to see lots of our lovely friends and members of our Croakheads family, and our residents were running around spreading the word, too.

On Saturday 8th August, we hosted a fundraiser for Save The Post at The Castle in London. We had takeover sets from multiple collectives: Get Hook'd, Feral Frequencies, Flux, Lava Liquid, Proelium Audio, Streetlight and Teksektr. We also had our residents and ambassadors play, as well as Aja joining us for a Croakheads b2b with Zaba. Everyone did fantastic Drum and Bass/Jungle/Dub/Funk sets.

We managed to raise £100 for Music Venue Trust via our merch stall - which we were really proud of! And we met lots of amazing local people who brought the energy, vibes and smiles throughout the whole night. The lovely Ellie was also on photography duty all night - doing an fantastic job as always!

On Saturday 25th July, we took over our local in Oxford to run an event at The Bullingdon. We had takeover sets from local Oxford artists from collectives such as DNE Records, Phase Records, Unprepared Collective (all the way from Dublin!) and the local Oxford University Electronic Music Society. We also had our residents and ambassadors play. Everyone did fantastic Drum and Bass/Jungle sets and the event was sold out an hour before door closed at 1am.

We manage to raise over £400 for Music Venue Trust via ticket sales and our merch - which we were really proud of! And we met lots of amazing local people who brought the energy, vibes and smiles throughout the whole night.

On Wednesday 22nd July, we took over Red Arch in Manchester for a Music Venue Trust fundraiser and Dancefloor Drum and Bass event. We sourced a lineup of Manchester and Northern DJs, with our resident Zaba, and hosted a competition for which Loucid was the winner. Everyone did fantastic sets.

We manage to raise £95 for Music Venue Trust via ticket sales and our merch - which we were really proud of! And we met lots of amazing local people who brought the energy, vibes and smiles throughout the whole night. It was also a huge pleasure to meet the lovely Connie and Georgina from Neurosystem and The Bag Factory. Thank you so much to Abzero who also did photography and videography all night for us, too.

We have been hard at work preparing for Boomtown and other festivals this summer. We have printed over 1,000 flyers with venue closure statistics to hand out, hoping that these may encourage festival attendees to consider attending more grassroots, local events. Or even possibly come to ours in the future. We've created over 150 "Croakheads" friendship bracelets so far to hand out to people at the festival.

As well as sticker packs, with those flyers inside, to hand out to people in the shuttle bus or train station queues. We have even started to receive photos from you putting them up!

We were also featured in the Fleckies article by Chelsea Marshall about our Head of Operations Zaba. You can check out the full article here.

On Friday 26th June, we went to Bristol to run an event at Basement 45. We had Raybay as a Headliner doing a takeover for Haven Events, with some DJs from the Bristol-based collective Music from the Mothership. We also had our residents play with some local Bristol DJs. Our competition winner was Frizzi, who delivered an incredible set of Dancefloor DnB to start the night. We were also joined by Purple Beyblade X League who taught a lot of our attendees how to play Beyblades.

They even made us some custom ones, too. We had new merch on the stall and gave our festival sticker packs. And we raised £123 for Music Venue Trust!