Want to go clubbing before you’re 18? Then go to Uuunight, initiated by pop podium De Helling. A safe place for young people to let go and discover nightlife.
It’s a 9.45 p.m. in KABUL à GoGo. The doors open in 15 minutes, but youngsters balancing on barstools are still hanging LPs from the ceiling. While the DJ’s warming up someone stands skateboards against his booth. They’re for decoration, but visitors can skateboard if they want – another idea thought of by the youths avidly decorating the ceiling. Supervised by pop podium De Helling, they’re the ones who organised this first edition of Uuunight, a club evening for 15-20-year-olds.
Hanging around
There’s not a lot of nightlife for the younger generation. Venues for this age group are few and far between, and ones like FRIS-feesten are rapidly disappearing from the Utrecht scene. Co-organiser Rasmus Hessen (15), for example, has never been to a club night. ‘The highlight of the year in my village is me and my tennis team playing cards in the club house.’ Tom Strik from De Helling continues: ‘It’s important to create more events for this age group. It stops them from hanging around in parks or secretly drinking at their parents’ homes. What they need is a place to let go. Somewhere to work out who they are.’
And this is precisely the aim of this special project being run by De Helling. A group of 20 enthusiastic youngsters have spent the past year organising three club evenings, each with its own theme: alternative, hip-hop and hits. Before setting to work, they attended workshops run by professionals focusing on content creation, marketing and social safety. They split into three groups, based on their interests, with each group organising its own club evening.
Skating & gaming
The lights are dimmed just before 10 and the room transforms into a real club. The youngsters look around the empty room, their eyes shining with excitement. ‘It’s bizarre to think that we’re looking at the ideas that started out on post-its’, says Rasmus. The lighting technician comes over to ask what he should do about the lighting. ‘It’s cool to be taken so seriously’, says Lanikai ter Hoeven (15). ‘I don’t often feel ‘seen’ by adults, but I do now! We were given the freedom to launch any ideas we had.’ Rasmus agrees: ‘If we put forward a theme, they asked: what do you mean by that exactly? Tell us in more depth. You can’t organise a good club evening on superficial ideas.’
The DJ met them beforehand to ask what they wanted for the club evening. ‘This group has an extremely wide taste in music, from Finnish metal to Froukje, and yet somehow, it all comes together,’ Tom laughs. ‘And they know exactly what they want.’ So what is that? ‘They want to be able to do stuff during the evening. Like skating, gaming or even spraying graffiti. One of their ideas was that everyone should dress in white so they can draw on each other with markers. And one of the groups wants a rodeo bull, which is something I’d never thought of.’
Non-alcoholic
Finding young people to organise the Uuunight wasn’t as simple as it sounds, Tom explains. ‘During the campaign, I realised how little I know about this generation. We’d made posters with a QR code so that they could sign up. We hung them around the local high schools. But… students aren’t allowed to take their phones into school anymore. We eventually found our target group via TikTok.’
Finding three clubs to host the club nights wasn’t easy either. Tom: ‘Venues earn money from bar takings, so a non-alcoholic evening like Uuunight means they run at a loss. But we got there in the end with EKKO and KABUL à GoGo and grant from the municipality.’ Over-18s aren’t served alcohol either; this is what the young people themselves want, to avoid awkward situations.
It’s 10 o’clock and Rasmus can’t wait to open the doors to KABUL à GoGo. Time for the reporter (in their 20s) to leave gracefully. This evening, the dancefloor is for a new generation of club-goers.
The next editions of Uuunight are on 19 December 2025 in De Helling and 6 February 2026 in EKKO
Lees in het Nederlands
Over dit artikel
text:
Sophie Manusov
images:
Jelle de Ru
Publication date:
4 December 2025
Magazine edition:
UITagenda Utrecht dec/jan 2025
