Legendary club Sankeys returns with phone ban to 'recapture spontaneity'

Queues ran down the street outside, while inside memories were made and lost - and it all unfolded without a smartphone in sight.

- Sinéad Campbell

For those who remember the Manchester nightclub Sankeys in its heyday, the venue was a clubbing mecca."Sweat was dripping off the walls," said Lee Spence, a promoter and resident DJ at the club from 2002 to 2012, who remembers double booking the drum and bass duo Chase & Status and the DJ Carl Cox one night. "It was an atmosphere like nothing else I'd really seen."

It closed in 2017, but now, against a tide of closing venues, Sankeys is back. And just like when it first opened more than three decades ago, there will be no phones on the dancefloor.

David Vincent, one of the nightclub's founders, who is behind its resurrection, said venues needed to return to a more “intimate” experience rather than the selfie frenzies that saturate social media.

"The phones are the problem," he said. "People are more bothered about having a phone and filming the DJ rather than dancing."

The aim in particular is to tackle incessant filming on the dancefloor.

"We're probably going to put a sticker on their camera so they can't film. People need to stop taking pictures and start dancing to the beat," Vincent said.