Heartbreakers Club founders Twinks Burnett and Alex Ingram talk to The New Feminist about their London event born from heartbreak, and why creating community and getting people dancing might just be the most political thing you can do right now.
“Dance, club culture and partying are integral to society because otherwise it’s just eat, sleep, work, repeat. We need to dance.” co-founder of Heartbreaker’s Club, Twinks Burnett tells me.
On the two occasions I’ve met Twinks (once at a march against the far-right and another over Zoom for this interview), I couldn’t help but be completely captivated by her infectious energy. Together with her talented bestie Alex Ingram, they have founded the inclusive party space that is Heartbreaker’s Club. I sat down with them both to talk about the nights that have been bringing people unbridled joy and connection.
The number of nightclubs in Britain has almost halved in the past decade, with a 30% fall since the start of the pandemic alone. Cost of living, safety concerns, and a collective anxiety over our dip in socialisation skills since Covid are just a few of the reasons the industry has taken a hit. It’s not just the industry that has taken a hit. A generation of people are increasingly disconnected, increasingly alone, and increasingly online.
As someone who has worked from home for the better part of six years, the intersection between community and politics is something I have been incredibly fascinated by. With the rise of the far-right and the political landscape feeling more unstable by the day, I often wonder if this has been facilitated by a sense of community that the Reform demographic has – a racist, bitter and bigoted community, but a community nonetheless.
Research from the Belonging Forum found that almost half of young women in the UK feel lonely, with the number who describe themselves as satisfied with their lives dropping nine percentage points in a single year. Social media, the study noted, creates connectivity, but not necessarily connection. Those two things are increasingly and urgently different.
Which is part of why what Twinks and Alex are doing in a little corner of Stoke Newington is worth paying attention to.
Heartbreakers Club was born out of Alex’s divorce. When she was going through it, Twinks started sending her music. “Often when you didn’t have the words to describe what was going on that day, or what you’re feeling, or how you felt about each other, we’d put it into the playlist,” Twinks explains. They realised the playlist they made consisted only of women’s vocals, only songs that built you up, and nothing that made a man the centre of the story. It became, as Twinks puts it, “almost like a spellbook of tunes.”
From there, the party was obvious. Alex is a world-renowned event producer and DJ, and Twinks is a stylist and creative director; between them, the idea arrived fully formed. “I could design the vision and the aesthetic of it immediately; there was no figuring it out,” Twinks says. “And Alex can just take what we envisage together and actually create it. I can get the plane off the tracks. And Alex can keep it safely in the sky.”
The shared passion, enthusiasm and almost twin-like symbiosis between Twinks and Alex is what I believe makes Heartbreakers Club so unique. It is apparent not just in how they talk about what they do, but you can feel the atmosphere they create in the images and videos from events, and see the excitement and love in the comments from the people who have attended. It is one thing to create a space where people can have fun together; it is another thing entirely to build a community where strangers can become lifelong friends.
Another thing that struck me whilst talking to Twinks and Alex was the little ways they make their events different from a standard club night, which feel inherently femme and women-centred. From the craft corner run by Sophie Malpas of Cut.Stick.Create, to the vintage stall run by Studio Venus, where you can actually shop during the night. Let’s be honest, a man would never think to come up with that.
It’s easy to see how the event lends itself to an inclusive and welcoming environment. They pride themselves on being a FLINTA (Female, Lesbian, Intersex, Non-binary, Transgender, and Agender) space and encourage women of all ages to attend, explaining how they have had a 75-year-old and a 19-year-old sharing the same dance floor. They consider the lack of access older women have to spaces like these, where women can just be themselves and have fun. They insist that everyone can and should wear whatever they want, whether that’s a bedazzled co-ord or a tracksuit and a hot water bottle, and are active in ensuring that those who are nervous, introverted, or coming alone feel genuinely safe and accepted. “We want all the girlies and all the theys to feel like this is their space,” Twinks says. “If there aren’t enough seats at the table, then we sit on the fucking floor, we build another table.”
Throughout the evening, Alex takes the decks, and Twinks takes the mic, guiding everyone through considered themed sets named things like Hexes and Exes, Bad Girl Summer, Rise of the Girlband, with performers from the Cocoa Butter Club, showcasing and celebrating performers of colour, headlining previous events. The music is always women’s vocals only, always something that builds rather than tears down, which is harmonious with the welcoming energy that themes the night. “There’s no Regina George at Heartbreakers Club,” Twinks says. “There’s no room for that.”
A phrase they like to use when describing the Heartbreakers Club is ‘joyful resistance’. When I asked them about the politics interwoven in that phrase, Twinks told me: “We’ve always been politically active, and we’ve created this wonderful space. And I think we live in this world right now where people feel guilty for having a nice time because there are so many atrocities happening in the world. But actually, creating community, bringing people together, making sure that we fight solitude, is political.”
Twinks has long been politically active. She talks about the tension she used to feel between that version of herself and the one in the sequins and the teeny tiny dress. “I personally spent a lot of time thinking, well, how can I speak actively about human rights and politics and then look the way I look?” she says. “And actually, I figured out the two aren’t separate. And if we can in our cute, gorgeous, femtastic, feral, fun party, inspire people who wouldn’t normally turn up to a protest or wouldn’t normally speak out about certain things, then that’s what we’ll do.”
Both Twinks and Alex are particularly vocal about trans rights, and make a point of using whatever platform Heartbreakers gives them to say so clearly. At their first festival headline set at Camp VC, which fell on the same weekend as Trans Pride, Twinks took the mic and told the crowd that at Heartbreakers Club, trans rights are human rights. “We would rather have one doll than a frigging room full of TERFs,” she says.
“Whatever platform we have, whether it’s a festival stage or our own party, we always make sure that we do a big call to arms and call to support for the trans community.”
Twinks also talks about the Pink Ladies, the far-right women’s group that has become a fixture at anti-immigration protests across the UK. While she finds them dangerous, she also understands the mechanism. “They found this feminism where they feel a certain sense of belonging,” she says. “I can see why they’re doing it. Because fundamentally all we want is to belong and all we want is community and all we want is to be seen and celebrated.” The difference is what you build that community on, and for Twinks and Alex, it’s important that it brings people together rather than stoking division and hate: “Let’s do it through joy. Let’s do it through joyful resistance and love and celebrating diversity.”
“If I can get you dancing,” she says, “I can get you voting. And I can get you into the streets.”
This is what I kept coming back to after our conversation ended; the idea that joy is not the opposite of politics, that dancing and marching can come from the same impulse, and that creating a room where everyone feels genuinely welcome is, right now, a radical thing to do. Heartbreakers Club is heading to Brighton this July for its debut at Madame Lola’s, with plans for a regular residency. As well as that, they’ll be doing festival sets, women’s retreats, and more that they couldn’t yet speak about.
“Heartbreakers Club is a love letter to all the women that came before us, after us, the groups that nurtured us,” Twinks says. “Once we hit play, the night belongs to everyone.”
I, for one, will be there.
Heartbreakers Club’s Brighton debut takes place on 2 July at Madame Lola’s, you can get tickets here. Keep up with future events via their Instagram.
