Spotlight: Something To Hate On

Spotlights are a 12 part series documenting emerging creatives in London.  This week we met with Something to Hate On (SHO). SHO is a collective founded in 2017 by Dan Mould and Max Clarke. It emerged to fill a gap in the London's uninspiring party scene; the pair were tired of attending the same parties focused around drinking, so set out to create new immersive experiences as an alternative. SHO came about as a platform to expose London's young creative scene and 'bring creatives in every lane together'. Now it has its own clothing line, record label and events company. We met them to find out more…

Why SHO?

Dan: The name was born out of this idea that when something becomes popular it comes with a bandwagon of hate.

Max: Completely unnecessarily.

Dan: You haven’t gotten to where you need to be if you don’t have haters.

How did SHO start?

Max: SHO was born out of frustration with going to the same kind of industry events where its free drinks sponsored by 'blahblah' and you see the same people perform and you have nothing else to do other than get drunk. Then you leave and you wake up in the morning and you have nothing really to speak about.

What do SHO do?

Dan: We put on immersive events where people can come, have an experience and take something away.

Max: We have our parties which are rowdy and fun with a selection of the best DJs, but we also run Show Sessions which is more music based to draw a musical crowd that just want to listen and really pay attention to the music. The events have become like a free network evening for creatives.

You collaborate a lot with other creatives, why do you think collaborations are so important?

Dan: With the clothing we collaborated initially to put good people in good places. We were working with artists that maybe wouldn't have made clothes themselves and we helped them make clothes with their art.

Max: A lot of people don't have enough money to go and buy a painting that costs £300-£5,000, so if you can make it more graspable for the youth by putting it on a hoodie it's another way of getting their art out there. Collaborating is also really fun. Coming up with ideas that you might not have come up with by yourself, it's a whole new experience.

Why do you specifically like working with up and coming/ emerging creators?

Max: It just so happens that our friendship group is full of really talented creative people who have a good drive. They naturally were the up and coming, lesser-known talented people, so we didn't have to look very far initially.

Dan: It's nice to promote people that are up and coming and watch them grow.

Max: It happened by accident, but the feeling we get by doing that for other people and watching them grow has definitely fuelled us to carry on.

What makes you guys different? What's special about SHO?

Max: The authenticity of the relationships within SHO makes us a bit different to the other things I see going on. A lot of our relationships had been forged naturally before we had anything to give them, so it's more of a friendship group than a business.

What kind of role have social media played in SHO?

Dan: It's definitely played a big role. We do everything on Instagram, down to our RSVP list to parties and all of our clothes. We sell and promote everything on Instagram. For what we do, which is finding new up and coming people and trying to connect them with other people, Instagram has been crazy.  We get random messages from random people being like 'listen to my music" and most times, they’re lit.

Max: It's a very good place to find people's portfolios.

Where do you see yourself in the future?

Max: Doing exactly what we're doing now, just on a bigger and better scale and branching out into different cities. Stay relevant, keep consistent and keep putting people on.

Dan: We really want the people that we're working with to become bigger and better.

Max: When I think of SHO, I think of a house with different levels. I think of the basement being a dark room for photographers, the next room being a studio where musicians and producers come in and upstairs you could have sewing and embroidery machines. A creative house where everyone can come and do what they want and make good content, good music and good clothes and bounce ideas off each other. I definitely want to have a space like that in the next 5 years where we can work with our friends.