The creation of Nice Twice
Nice Twice Club is a campaign which has been established following our community led project in 2022 ran by Royal Mencap.
We worked with 1,236 Hull residents, hosted 100 community conversations, 25 engagement events and workshops. This led to the creation of the Nice Twice Club campaign.
Following these 125 community conversations and engagement events, it was clear that one of the most important topics in Hull was venue accessibility. We put a call-out inviting community members with lived experience to explore this topic further, these community members collectively decided to create a ‘local interest group’ to meet to discuss venue accessibility and create a plan of action. The group was established in 2023 and it was quickly apparent they wanted to develop a campaign. We enlisted the support from Mencap’s campaigns team and started work on what this campaign would look like.
The group discussed the importance of kindness, understanding and friendliness. The campaign took shape to raise awareness of emotional accessibility and the importance of acceptance, feeling welcome and safe in a space.
Mencap was passionate that this community led development work was led by and ran by local communities, therefore we approached local charity, Hull Red to host the campaign. In 2024, the campaign was launched under Hull Red. Hull Red is a longstanding charity which aims to “increase social opportunities for adults with learning disabilities, particularly around music, nightlife and gigs”. In 2022, Hull Red took over the Gig Buddies franchise and now hosts both Gig Buddies and Nice Twice Club projects. This allows us to work closely together, Gig Buddies aims to improve audience inclusion whereas Nice Twice Club campaigns to work with the venues themselves.
Research by Mencap (2019) suggests that 1 in 3 young people with a learning disability spend less than 1 hour outside their home on a typical Saturday. 1 in 3 of those stated that they don’t go out because they are worried about the following:
- getting lost
- people calling me names or bullying me
- using public transport
- people laughing at me
- asking a member of public for help
- people ignoring me
Sadly, 1 in 4 people with a learning disability have been bullied by members of the public at gigs and 1 in 3 are afraid of staff at music venues.
Nice Twice Club ‘practice what we preach’ and approach this devastating reality with safe, welcoming and non-judgmental conversations with local venues. We are passionate about opening difficult conversations and raising awareness in an open and understanding way.
Nice Twice Club aims to work with local venues and organisations to raise awareness and offer support and guidance on how to improve their accessibility and inclusion. Nice Twice Club specifically looks at emotional access.