About
In much of contemporary club culture, DJ centred programming has become the default to the point of hegemony, shaping not only what is presented, but what is perceived as legitimate electronic music labour. Alongside this, line ups in electronic dance music have historically skewed heavily male, reproducing the same networks, aesthetics, and hierarchies, and making it harder for women, trans and non binary artists, and artists from the global majority to be seen, booked, and paid fairly.
Computer Club exists as an antithesis to that norm. We champion live hardware performance, open process, and collective learning, and we build line ups and spaces that actively challenge gatekeeping. We are a diverse community of creatives offering a radical alternative to what club culture can look like, who it can centre, and how it can value people.
We organise everything we do around these priorities:
• We are actively anti racism, anti sexism, anti homophobia, anti transphobia, anti ableism, anti classism, and anti any other form of discrimination.
• We do not tolerate harassment, intimidation, or exclusionary behaviour, on stage, behind the scenes, or in the crowd.
This is non-negotiable. If people cannot be safe and respected, the rest of the manifesto is meaningless.
• We commit to 50/50 gender representation across line ups.
• We commit to a minimum 25 percent global majority representation, aligned with the UK’s demographic reality.
This is not a marketing line. It is a design constraint we choose, because culture should look like the world it claims to represent.
• All artists are paid the same, regardless of profile, followers, or perceived prestige.
We reject the idea that visibility equals value. Our nights are built on shared labour and shared respect.
• We radically change booking culture by favouring public open calls and transparent selection processes.
• We do not build line ups through nepotism, closed networks, or informal patronage.
We want unknown names to become known through opportunity, not permission.
• We platform forums and conversations that let audiences and artists share knowledge, perspective, and practical skills.
• We treat the dance floor, the green room, and the chat as parts of the same ecosystem.
Computer Club is a place to meet collaborators, swap techniques, and leave with more than you arrived with.
• We increase knowledge of live hardware electronic music through visibility, context, and skill sharing.
• We defend the value of live process, improvisation, risk, and craft.
We want more people to know how this music is made, and to feel capable of making it too.
• We provide local musicians with real chances to perform, develop, and connect.
A healthy scene is not imported. It is grown, nurtured, and repeated.
• We bring artists from outside the region to Leeds to create exchange, inspiration, and solidarity across scenes.
This is about dialogue, not clout.
• We put money into the spaces that host culture, helping venues remain open and viable.
Venues are not neutral containers. They are the infrastructure of nightlife, and they need protecting.
Computer Club is our attempt to practice utopia without pretending we can perfect it. We are not chasing a spotless ideal, we are building workable conditions: safety that is enforced, access that is designed in, and value that is shared rather than hoarded. In a culture that too often rewards status, speed, and spectacle, we choose slow infrastructure, mutual care, and the public good. We treat the night as a commons where resources circulate, and where difference is not merely tolerated but actively protected.
We believe community is made out of repeated gestures: an open call that widens the circle, equal pay that refuses hierarchy, a forum where knowledge becomes collective, a dance floor where bodies can exist without fear. This is how culture becomes more than entertainment. It becomes a civic space that keeps venues alive, grows local artists, welcomes visitors into real exchange, and makes room for futures that mainstream nightlife has not yet learned how to host. Computer Club is a promise we renew each time we gather: that we can make a night which leaves the city stronger and more connected than it found it.