While we are sitting down, the record continues to rotate. Ancient crackling accompanies the music. Daniel Fernandes was born in Lisbon but moved to Faro in his early childhood. He saw how the city changed over the years and what movements arose.
Just focusing on the past two, or three years I’ve seen a change here in Faro. Especially regarding culture. The electronic scene. Two years ago you had to wait for a techno or house party for like three months. Nowadays, you have one every weekend. That’s great. I made this experience by myself. In the past year, I started working in the electronic scene here in Faro. I sell tickets and promote events. I could see that more and more people become interested in this field.
However, there are still some problems or let’s say potential.
People are missing. Especially on Fridays. First of all, I think the main thing is that just 80% of the people who are in Faro go out to where the people are and the other 20% go to parties because they like the music. I'm not just talking about the electronic scene. That's the first problem. To attract people to for example go into a club, you have to bring someone recognizable. Moreover, I think a lot depends on communication as well.
Regarding communication, what could clubs or bars improve?
That's a great question. Honestly. I mean, for example, communication is like my job. I share the happening of events on Social Media, but for me, it doesn’t seem right to share things every week. I feel like what's efficient is talking to people about it. There's gonna be this party, for which I sold 40 tickets last weekend. That’s a lot of tickets. But I didn’t sell them via my Instagram story, but when I talked to the people directly.
What else must be improved?
Another problem is that the majority of places close at 4:00 am. That’s way too early. That’s the time, everyone just wants to keep going. I assume that if this changes and the places stay open until maybe 6:00 am, the dynamic of the nightlife is gonna change completely. Another problem is that in some places, which I generally like a lot, the drinks are very expensive. The city also has to face other obstacles. Downtown is surrounded by a bunch of houses. That makes it difficult to enable places to be open for example until 6:00 am. People complain about the noises.
On the other hand, I think that a lot of organizers have nailed the aesthetic of their communication. The message can be conveyed, but it’s difficult to find the balance between promoting an event on Social Media regularly and posting too much. If it’s too much, people receive the promotion as spam and won’t pay attention.
How can we improve things?
I think that it would move things forward if we created a bridge between the university and clubs here in Faro. Maybe just to let people know that there is an electronic scene. I feel like a lot of people are still not aware of that.
Something like a collective?
That would be a good idea. Just put everyone in one place working together, but I don't know if that's ever gonna happen. Most places belong to the same people. There are only a few independent places. This is a problem in my opinion because everyone is always in competition with each other.
