“Genuinely revolutionary”

To ensure Joy is accessible to all Open Door is working with consultants Dancefloor Intimacy. Ali Wagner has been working with our community over the last few months to ask them what they want from Joy and how can the spaces be as welcoming as possible. Ali answered some of our questions on the work so far.

What attracted you to the Joy project?

The holistic mission. I was attracted to the fact that Joy is not just a gig venue, it’s a space explicitly designed to support mental health and improve people’s lives. While music venues often serve as important third spaces for community, Joy goes further by embedding wellbeing at its core. Equally compelling were the people involved. The team at Open Door and the Birkenhead community were remarkably kind, caring, and genuinely invested in creating something meaningful. Their curiosity and hope for the future were contagious, the kind of environment that made me genuinely excited.

“Joy is positioned to be genuinely revolutionary for the community”

Dancefloor Intimacy primarily works with nightlife venues. How do you see nightlife, community and mental wellbeing intersecting?
Nightlife venues, community music spaces and mental health have so many intersections. For me personally, as a queer person, dancefloors have been a place where I’ve learned about and expressed my sexuality, and met people from my community. Most of my closest friendships were formed on the dancefloor, these spaces can truly become third spaces for minority communities, places that genuinely support mental health. On the flip side, they can also impact mental health negatively when they don’t nurture people or support their access needs. It really comes down to how intentional these spaces are about who they’re for.

Tell us briefly about the consultation process from the very beginning to where we are now.

It started with a call with Lee about coming up to Birkenhead to meet the team and see Joy, and we decided at Bloom that I’d work with them to make Joy as accessible as possible for Disabled individuals and the wider Wirral community. From there, the conversation grew into something bigger, we agreed to host focus groups and make this a truly community-led research piece. We ended up running two in-person focus groups at Bloom and one online, all open to Disabled, Neurodivergent, Deaf, Blind and chronically ill people from the Wirral, inviting them to share what they wanted from Joy. We also sent out a wider questionnaire to capture more voices. All of those conversations were then translated into the recommendations report for Joy.

“That kind of moment can genuinely change the direction of someone’s life.”

What are the main takeaways you’ve learned about Wirral and its community from this project?

The people of Wirral are absolutely thirsty for new spaces – new gig venues, new community hubs. You can feel it. Everyone’s itching for it, and Joy is positioned to be genuinely revolutionary for the community there.

What are the most exciting opportunities for a project like Joy?

I think its most exciting opportunity is to provide a third space for people in the Wirral who often feel left out of the conversation, or like they don’t get the same as other parts of the UK. Beyond that, it has the chance to bring new music acts and experiences to Birkenhead that could inspire a generation and open people’s minds. And there’s something really special about the proximity of everything under one roof, someone might come to Joy to use the mental health facilities and find themselves wandering into a gig almost by accident. They push themselves a little out of their comfort zone, they enjoy it, they learn something about themselves. That kind of moment can genuinely change the direction of someone’s life.

Read the full recommendations report from Dancefloor Intimacy here

 

You recently visited the Joy site. In terms of implementing your recommendations, what did you see from the build at this stage?

It was tough to get a full picture because it was very much still a construction site with builders everywhere! But what I could see was promising, it’s already clearly physically accessible for wheelchair users. They’ve been careful to include ramps, enough turning circle space, large accessible toilets. The rest will become a lot more apparent on my next visit, I think.

Finally, what are your top tips for wellbeing?

Go dancing, either alone or with friends.

Listen to music, and if you can’t pick something, discover new music on NTS.

Go for a walk near a body of water.