Artists Rob St John and Diane Muldowney have gathered 100 stories about nightlife in Nelson.

These stories come from the 1950s to the present day. They've been housed in a jukebox, alongside an exhibition of photography and films, which will be on display for everyone to experience in Nelson Town Centre. 
The recordings were gathered across 2025 and 2026 by Rob St John, with Diane Muldowney and Michael Powell. Fourteen were never collected at all: people had taped themselves, or left a VHS camera running on a last night of a club, and their recordings had sat in a drawer for years.

The exhibition launches on Wednesday 14th October 
5-7 at Nelson Library
"Taken together they are about more than nightlife. They are a record of what people here have built for themselves when nothing was built for them, and how often those places were lost again: to fire, to closure, to the price of the ground they stood on. They are also about this valley. The canal that carried coal and cotton, the moor that had to be fought for, the dark sky above a lit town." - Rob St John 


The exhibition launches on Wednesday 14th October 5-7 at Nelson Library and will be open during library opening hours until 16th January. 
We hope to see you there!

The project was commissioned by In-Situ as part of This is Nelson, and made by artists Rob St John, Tommy Perman, Michael Shorter and Diane Muldowney.