Nightclub, café and creative coworking space, discover The Art Club in Dover, words by Jack Coleman

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“It’s like ‘Well, we can open a space that’s kind of for everyone’. If you want to learn to DJ or listen to music, or get into it, it’s like ‘Come here, we’re the place’.”

That’s Travis Skelton. A respected house and techno DJ and one of two directors, along with Rory Pye, of The Art Club Dover. An intimate 100-cap space “built for those who live and breathe creativity”. At night it’s a grassroots music venue and club; by day it’s a café and coworking spot, a meeting point for Dover’s creatives to commune.

Coming out of a rebranding exercise with a fresh look and a firm sense of who they are - “no fixed form, always expressive, always us” - creativity and community are at the core of their identity.
The Art Club now has almost three years under its belt, with little sign that things are slowing down, Travis sharing that the venue’s much agonised-over rebrand was ready to be made public. But let’s go back to the beginning.

Work started on the club in early 2023, opening near the year’s end. In the early days of its development there was some scepticism about its concept: a club in a port town not widely known for its dance-music scene, attempting to create a big-city nightlife experience. Seemingly on no one’s bingo card in 2023, but this idea was seven years in the making.

“Before [the club] we used to put on parties around Dover under Section 82, my previous events company. I think that kicked off in 2016? I was young at the time. We were into house music kind of stuff, a bit more bassy,” says Travis.

“In our area it was non-existent - the type of music that we liked and wanted to hear, we couldn’t get. And a lot of people felt that way, that’s why it probably did so well. That’s why we started doing the parties.
“[Section 82] progressed into a two-day music festival that went on for about three years. Then with the success of that, it was kind of like ‘What’s next?’.”

There was a healthy appetite among local crowds for the late-night dance-music scene in the town and for Travis and his friends there was ample evidence that this, along with their own passion, could sustain a space that could house this burgeoning scene.

For the original three eponymous founders (Alfy, Rory and Travis - hence ‘Art’ Club), it was important that this space was an accessible launchpad for new artists and DJs to cut their teeth.

“When I first got into DJing, it was cutthroat and cliquey”, Travis reflects. “As a young person that can be quite intimidating and makes you not want to bother just because of how difficult it is.

“We’re just a decent music venue where you can go listen to DJs that you haven’t necessarily heard, or live music. If we’d had this when we were going through that musical journey it would’ve been so sick.”

Many UK venues are having to rethink how to make dedicated music spaces viable businesses: “We have to adapt and pivot as much as we can,” says Travis. But the team at The Art Club Dover always intended for the space to be dedicated to music and to cultivating a creative community, which of course means coffee, pastries and coworking.

“[When we started] my girlfriend was a barista at the time and we liked the idea of coffee and coworking. We set that up from the start and that’s taken off, really, to the point now where I’m so glad we did, it’s kept us ticking over.”

So why set up shop in Dover? A town that by Travis’s own admission is a particularly challenging area in which to operate a business like this. The answer is straightforward: “Because we’re all born and bred here,” he says.
“I can see the potential in Dover and it’s really starting to change, and that’s really nice. At the start, the club was such a different business for Dover. There was nothing like it and now you’ve got the right people seeing it and saying ‘Oh OK, maybe Dover is changing? These guys seem to be doing pretty well’.”

The team at the venue have continued to be creative with their approach to The Art Club, trying out new concepts and adapting to their growing community’s lifestyles - for example setting its own resident running club.

“... my girlfriend set that up, Lydia Oulton, big shout-out to her,” says Travis. “I think for some people it’s hard to build that bridge of fitness lifestyle and late-night partying. It’s completely widened the whole outlook of the club.”

The nightlife has to remain varied, also.

“We’ll be running a ‘tunes and tapas’ night called Resonance. My pal Manny, he says ‘Where I’m from, food culture is such a big part of events, why is that not a thing here?’. And I was like ‘Why isn’t it?’. So we’ll be playing house music and people will be bringing out tapas plates you can snack on, and midnight fruit comes out. It’s such a cool vibe and for the UK - no one does that!”

When asked if he runs anything outside of the club, Travis laughs wryly: “I don’t. I’m literally just tied up full-time at the club… it’s literally taken over my life.”

“I don’t think there’s anything else I’d rather be doing, to be honest. As hard and as stressful as it is… we work for ourselves, we do what we want to do, there’s no one pressuring us. It’s that freedom of ‘We can do whatever we want’. For me that keeps me going all the time.”