“When a cyclist goes past you in a park and they've got the boombox on the bike – I love it,” says Emma‑Jane Nutbrown, the boundlessly creative founder of Queer Edge. “The frequency hits you, doesn’t it? And it just lifts your energy for that moment of time.”

Her enthusiasm for all things music, identity and Hackney Wick is infectious, and has led to an impressive empire growing out of a fledgling party she started downstairs from her office at Two More Years, back in 2023.

Wittily-named with a local pun: Queer East, the parties and the organisation they helped build later changed to Queer Edge to avoid confusion with the Southeast Asian LGBTQ+ film festival. But it all started as a response to a fragmented queer scene.

“I found in the gay London scene that we're a little bit segregated,” Emma‑Jane explains. “I can go to some raves and they're predominantly gay guys, or I'd have to go to a lesbian specific-event, which is usually in a basement… So I kind of recognised a gap in the market. I thought, let's bring us all together in this wonderful area of Hackney Wick – and it worked. The demand was there, and it was beautiful.”

The monthly parties made a big effort to be as welcoming as possible to individuals who then swiftly became part of a fresh and growing community, and spawned offshoots like the clubbier Queer Edge Late over at Block C, cabaret evening Queer Edge Live at Nico’s, and social dinner event Queer Dine at Unlock, too.

That early demand created a self‑sustaining loop, as EJ tells us, smiling. “We invested in more local queer artists. Being able to book more DJs on the line-up, getting more go‑go entertainers in, and it grew and grew.”

But that same growth began exposing the perennial fragility of nightlife, buried just underneath. First, the parties had to move from Fish Island, as it was quickly becoming more residential and less suitable to the kind of extended hours the QE crowds were keen on.

The risk EJ was taking became significantly higher with the larger scale of events, so one sparsely attended night could severely dent the balance book.

And while QE looked to be a post-Covid success story, it was still having to navigate a national crisis in nightlife, one that shows no sign of improving yet, and something that has been particularly magnified in London’s LGBTQ+ venues, parties and social spaces.

“What we're seeing in the queer nightlife industry is the struggles that you see across nightlife in general,” admits EJ, “but it feels like it's heightened, because we are so grassroots, and I feel that often any support just doesn't hit at our level, politically.”

She feels the rolling cost of living crisis impacts so many of people’s decisions today, so even if they’d love to get out to attend more events, they simply can’t, or when they do are spending a lot less at the bar.

“Spending habits have massively shifted, and people's mental health is just not in a great place at the moment, with the state of the world and politics, and I’m sure that’s impacting people going out. People socialise differently, too. They want to chat via DMs, on TikTok or whatever, as opposed to be authentic on a dance floor. There are so many contributing factors as to why the nightlife scene is like it is at the moment, why the old club template is broken.”

But, ironically, part of Emma-Jane’s challenge comes from the success of queer events in the area, something she’s been at the very forefront of driving.

“This is a very positive predicament,” she laughs, “because the more spaces that you provide, and the more inclusive you try and be, it's inevitably kind of diluting things - which only heightens the issues we have in sustaining all that we’ve built.”

Despite her unswerving dedication to Hackney Wick and the community she’s invested so much into here, EJ has just moved her operations to Stuek in Dalston, an impressive multi-purpose queer work and play space, that seems highly aligned with her own evolution of what constitutes a meaningful social environment in ever-shifting times.

“We can't really preach we’re a space for everyone and then just provide club spaces,” she says. “So we evolved, we did live entertainment shows, co‑work spaces, dinner parties. We've constantly grown.”

This is just the latest evolution, and the alignment with Stuek looks set to open another new chapter for Queer Edge, perhaps taking some of the pressures out of the business side of things, while allowing the foundations built over recent years to continue to be built upon.

The success and the challenges of Queer Edge are a reminder of the social and cultural value that begins at night, before rippling out into all kinds of other ventures and alliances. EJ’s ever-evolving model is the kind of tun-on-a-sixpence adaptability that many promoters will need to have now to survive anywhere - as ever, pioneered here in the creative petri-dish of Hackney Wick.