Culture isn’t just how we describe the art we create, it’s also the word we use to define the people, places and lived experiences around us.

That we’re living through challenging times is a fairly inescapable reality. And while nightlife is traditionally the space we go to forget our troubles for a few hours, as art reflects life, the late night sector is currently struggling in the face of today’s complex headwinds.

I took a train up to Liverpool this week for the two-day Night Time Economy Summit, keen to hear how the guardians of our most joyful social experiences are faring, and what positive actions might be afoot to improve their many challenges.

With UK politics similarly unable to swerve the prevailing perma-chaos, coming out in vocal support of ‘our pubs, clubs and restaurants’ is a hot campaign tool. Which is possibly why so many politicians rumoured to have designs on the beleaguered PM’s job were to be found speaking up on the main stage at the city’s impressive food, drink, live music and comedy venue, Blackstock Market.

Angela Rayner played to the crowd with references to her proud hospitality roots working in Stockport’s pubs and takeaways, impassioned and thoughtful declarations of the need for more support for our after dark cultural spaces – and being partial to shimming on occasion to local lad DJ duo CamelPhat.

Northern mayoral double act, Burnham & Rotheram, ribbed each other over Manchester and Liverpool’s respective musical chops and delivered well-timed laughs with tales of their back-to-back charity DJ set exploits.

And whirlwind rising Green challenger, Zack Polanski, demonstrated his own impeccable nightlife credentials when referring to his many years working the door and behind the bar at legendary Charing Cross LGBT+ venue, Heaven.

Credibility jousting aside, it’s genuinely refreshing to hear from a line-up of so many politicians who clearly all enjoy a good night out, understand the depth of the current pressures and respect the cultural significance of the dancefloor.

Andy Burnham went as far as to call urban nightlife ‘critical infrastructure’, and he’s right. It’s impossible to quantify the value that Liverpool’s UNESCO City of Music designation and Beatles legacy, or Manchester’s decades of spitting out world-conquering bands continues to deliver to each city, every single day.

There’s an obvious affinity between the internationally renowned music-based stories of these Northern cultural powerhouses and the story we have in Camden, too. The danger for all these celebrated live music destinations - as Burnham also pointed out - is that we risk increasingly relying on nostalgia. Endlessly celebrating our area’s former glories, because the grassroots musical ecosystem today is so broken there’s simply not the platform or the pipeline in place for new artists to grind out a route through the clubs, up to the arenas and a sustainable career.

As I said the other day, there’s a tactical usefulness to the doom and gloom frontline reporting, and it seems to have worked if the level of politician falling over themselves to appear at this week’s conference is anything to go by.

But I prefer looking for solutions. So, now is the moment to capitalise on their campaigning. The Night Time Industries Association (NTIA) has scored a winner bagging this many voices to takes a stand and declare their love and support for the sector - gracing the front pages of many of today’s papers, no less.

Still, it’s been easy to talk up support for nighttime culture with hollow promises, but there’s no time left for that any more - and nobody should be able to get away with it.

Reform’s own bid to occupy this space, (with their unashamedly racist, questionably costed proposals to reduce beer taxes by reinstating the two-child benefit cap for all families without two white British parents) only highlights how easily this could just become another political football plopping into the culture war soundbite swamp.

Thankfully, many of those most keen to position themselves in line for the top job have now pledged action on stage in Liverpool. If you see any of them at the bar or on a dancefloor soon (which is actually quite possible), do make sure to remind them.

Despite the momentary arrival of the media circus, the conference was essentially a reminder of why I love nightlife and the assorted enthusiasts that make it happen, no matter the precarious realities.

When it comes to experiencing and producing great culture, these spaces remain as vital and as vivid as ever, despite it all.

Never one to be outdone, particularly on being seen backing 24-hour culture, London’s own Mayor also picked yesterday to a public licensing consultation on the future of the capital’s nightlife and hospitality. It’s a real opportunity to add your voice to the debate as licensing undergoes reform that aims to make the process more ‘pro growth and pro culture’, so it’s vital to have a range of opinions in there.

Today and all weekend is the London Bookshop Crawl 2026, offering a series of social walks (mostly sold out now) and a free self-guided tour/crawl kit, for the adventurous solo bookworms.

Despite the pressures of digital disruption, a walk through our borough boasts a wealth of specialist and quirky bookstores - and plenty of new ones that have opened in the last year, too, which is very exciting. Here’s Camdenist’s own reminder of a predominantly indie bookshop-rich route you might like to take this weekend, or anytime.

📔Start off on Covent Garden’s ‘booksellers row’, Cecil Court, at Goldsboro Books, famed as the home of desirable signed first edition hardbacks.

📔Pop in to Bookmarks, the largest socialist bookshop in the UK (and official sellers for the nearby TUC) for a spot of radical political thought.

📔Soak up the esoteric atmosphere up at Treadwells in Bloomsbury, where the focus is on all things magic, spiritual and mystical, including regular tarot readings.

📔Nearby you’ll find cultural hotspot the London Review Bookshop, with a strong events calendar and on-site cafe from the mighty St John (pictured above).

📔It’s a short walk over to Holborn’s Skoob Books, the huge basement in the Brunswick that’s stuffed with shelves of secondhand gold waiting to be rediscovered, including thousands of academic books.

📔Then sashay meaningfully across to Gays The Word, the campaigning LGBT+ bookshop and very first of its kind in the UK, dating back to the 70s and very much still a vital hub today.

📔King’s Cross boasts the legendary radical and progressive Housmans, a hub of all things feminist, anarchist, environmentalist and plenty more since 1959.

📔 You might want to divert up to the Regent’s Canal at this point to catch the ‘London Bookbarge’ Word on the Water, now permanently moored near The Lighterman, and a wonderful floating trove of bookishness.

📔 Chalk Farm Rd now boasts two brand new book sellers, the Camden Town Bookshop (which reminds me, in looks at least, of the long lost Compendium, which was once such a peerless countercultural book destination nearby).

📔 Just up the arcade is Fable & Falcon, which is as much a top top coffee pit stop as it is a diminutive room for browsing, reading and purchasing a lovely new hardback.

📔 Kentish Town’s Owl Bookshop is a longstanding classic, still pulling in brilliant guest speakers for signings.

📔 Small but perfectly-curated, Funny Weather books and coffee is proving a smash hit in its first few weeks since opening directly opposite the Heath (for another kind of top local walk) at Parliament Hill Fields.

📔And round off this borough-long bookshop odyssey at the longstanding Highgate Bookshop, still serving the village after decades in the game. There are still plenty more to choose from if you divert towards Primrose Hill or up to Hampstead, but this route really does serve as a reminder as to the riches committed to the printed page that we still have right here.

EAT: 🌮 Charlotte Street’s popular collaborative restaurant Carousel are repurposing their wine bar as a new wave Mexican seafood restaurant to be called Cometa when it opens next Fri 20th Feb.

COMEDY: 😂 Take your Valentine' for a laugh this Sat 14th Feb with standups Bob Mills and Phil Nichol at the new KX Comedy club, inside the Grade I listed Parcel Yard deep within the mainline station.

CLUB: 🪩 Just nominated in a BBC award for Major Venue of the Year, KOKO continues to smash it, with d&b hero Culture Shock tonight, Fri 13th Feb.

MUSIC: 🎸 Mønster Queen in communion with the Catacomb Club have a ceremonial awakening of desire for the devoted and the damned at Camden Assembly on Sat 14th Feb. Billed as a gathering where lovers, ghosts, and unfinished stories collide to worship love, break it open, and release it back onto the dancefloor, trembling and alive, you’ll get Tilly Electronics Live upstairs too.

STAGE: 🎭 Deafinitely Youth Theatre bring their end-of-term show, devised from scratch by young deaf artists and presented in BSL with creative captions for a boundary-shifting creative show at Camden People’s Theatre on Fri 20th Feb.