The Spirit
Exceeding expectations and celebrating a room full of love at the second edition of Soul Therapy.
The Movements:
📸 Instagram
🎧 My Mixes
⏯ More Mixes
🎹 Music Production
🔊 Bookings & Partnerships
Firstly, I have to say a huge thank you to The BBE Store for providing the space for us to do what we do. Also, big love to our DJs on the night, Esthahh, Bussa and Lwanga. Lastly, to the community for bringing the love and sensational energy.
Soul Therapy #2
My phone had been pinging off all day on Friday 7th November with email notifications coming through from the ticket platform Eventbrite. Last minute sign ups for Soul Therapy were rolling in, so much so, we ended up raising the ticket allocation a lil bit to cope with the demand.
We had to begin a bit later than planned due to some unforeseen circumstances, so we started at the revised time of 6:30 instead of 6 which meant that we needed to adjust set times ever so slightly.
Event promotion and curation is not for the weak!
The build up for this event I think was the best we’ve ever done in all honesty, everyone involved was on radio (Brixton, G-Shock and Voices Radio) in the lead up to the event. We had so much content to push and promote so everyone was very ready.
Feeling at Home
I think one of the best things we’ve come to appreciate about Soul Therapy is the kind of crowd the event attracts (even after only two events). It’s amazing how the energy you put out into the world and into the way you present yourself comes back to you.
Each time we’re amazed by the people that come to Soul Therapy. The feedback is important to us too to help us know how we can potentially improve things and grow. People often say how they came and met new people, talked openly without fear and made connections with people at our events.
People from across the UK and internationally find themselves in that room at the BBE and it’s a wonderful thing, united in sound and vibration. It’s honestly one of my most favourite things finding out where people have travelled from, their stories and what brings them to our event.
This message below sums it up:
Enabling people to come to an event on their own and feel comfortable is a powerful thing. We want to hold onto this for every event.
It’s one of them ones where you feel like all of the hard work you’ve put in has well and truly paid off. You look around the room and see everyone having a great time, enjoying the music and connecting with people they’ve never met before. I can easily get very sentimental about these things.
In a world where the feeling of loneliness is on the rise, isolation and lack of community (especially in urban environments), this kind of setting is really necessary. I feel like that’s just as big a part of what we do as is it DJing. Bringing people together.
2026 Considerations
I think there’s a lot of learnings we can take from our latest event and definitely some things to consider for future events.
Venue size:
As it stands, the next Soul Therapy is set to take place in April next year (keep and eye out for the promo) but we have considered potentially relocating to a slightly bigger venue in future, in order to cope with the increased demands.
We had roughly 300 sign ups this time round plus guests that attended who didn’t sign up. This created an amazing atmosphere but also meant that it became a bit cramped on the dance floor.
We always want people to be able to move around the venue and express themselves freely, in the last hour or two it was maybe a bit too packed in there.
Ticketing:
While we want Soul Therapy events to be as accessible as possible for everyone, the time, effort, energy and skill on display is all for free. At the beginning we wanted to keep it free to attract as many as possible but we feel it’s now probably time to monetise and help pay our DJs for their time, skill and effort.
There’s a few ways this can be done.
We could potentially introduce £5 tickets which isn’t much by any means, or we could negotiate with venues to take a percentage of the bar spend. As we brought around 300+ guests to the venue, it would be good to know what can be done with the BBE Store to pay back DJs from the bar spend.
I’m not really sure how you go about this but its definitely something we want to and have been advised to look into for future events. While its nice in the beginning to do things for free, we feel that the quality of the event needs to be reflected in the ticket. We’re still navigating this world and learning everyday so bear with us.
Reflections
Overall, this was an event full of some great learning and takeaways. It gave us a lot to think about for future events but it was also probably our biggest event to date. The growth is amazing to see and the feedback from the crowd is always a beautiful thing.
I’m starting to see a whole other side to the art of promoting and putting on events which is giving me more experience but also quite draining to be honest. I don’t really plan on doing any promo for a while haha! I’d personally like to enjoy what we’ve achieved for a bit and then start thinking about the next project.
This life moves so fast and I know its not always possible to sit, reflect and be present but I’ve realised its an essential part of my practice. A key part of the lifecycle of a project and one I don’t like to skip.
We are always searching for the next milestone, the next goal and the next big achievement we end up missing the joy of what' we’ve even accomplished already. Stuff we’ve been plotting and scheming about for years. I’ve really been making a conscious effort to acknowledge this recently.
For now, I’m quite content focusing on putting out one more mix before the year ends, plus hopefully releasing some of the content from our trip and collaboration with Virgin Hotels NYC earlier in the year.
I also have every intention to finally release some of my own music next year in the form of a 4 track EP! I’m not certain of the details just yet but I know in my soul that I need to release my own productions out in the world and get them off my hardrive.
I’ll likely do some kind of recap of the year in December (there’s a lot to recap on) but for now I have a desire to retreat into work mode, lock in and focus on some personal musical goals.
A huge huge thank you again to everyone that came through to Soul Therapy #2 and to everyone that made the journey. I hope we can do it all over again next year in April, bigger and better.
Big big love,
Raph