Good morning from Goth City itself, Leeds – where I am delighted to join a cabal of goth worthies, as we launch the Leeds Goth Hall of Fame on that most auspicious of dates in the dark calendar – World Goth Day!
Make sure you’re following me on social media, where I’ll share updates throughout the day. In the meantime, I reached out to Lee aka DJ BatBoy Slim, co-founder of the annual celebration, to get the crucial background on our Halloween in Spring…
Batboy Slim: Long story short, World Goth Day started in 2010 from an initially jokey discussion with renowned international DJ and occasional troublemaker martin oldgoth (lower case intentional) about creating a day where the worldwide goth community gets to celebrate itself and make its presence known to the rest of the world. We figured it would grow legs by itself and people would keep up the tradition, or it would just fade out, we really didn’t know.
Very quickly we both realised the idea was being taken quite seriously on a global scale, so we decided we should probably do something about centralising everything on a single information website so people could find a local WGD event, find out what it was all about and more. Thankfully John Holley stepped up and took care of running the Facebook page, because that’s a lot of work in itself too.
What have you specifically got planned for the day? Or, anything you’d recommend to the readers?
As I’ve been doing for quite a few years now, I’ve booked the day off work so I’ll be doing anything I like! But the day is often given to making last-minute website updates and answering emails from promoters regarding their own World Goth Day event. For the second year running, the online World Goth Day Festival (organised by Craig Dalrymple) will be running from Thursday to Saturday. There will be loads of Twitch streams and Youtube premieres going on from DJs and bands alike, I suggest people take a look at the website at worldgothday.com to check out the schedule because it’s very packed.
With regards to how anyone should celebrate WGD themselves, well, there’s an FAQ on the website which might help.
Why do you think it persists when so many other youth subcultures have risen and fallen?
I was going to make a joke about how the undead don’t die, but that’s too obvious and I tell really bad jokes.
I honestly have no idea what makes WGD persist. Sheer stubbornness I suspect, given that the events are run by passionate individuals and groups who are excited to let me know they’ve got something for me to add to the website every year.
When Covid hit and we were all in Lockdown, plans were immediately made to run online events via Twitch, and that core idea of online events continued to go on even after we were allowed to have live face to face events again.
Goth mutates and adapts to survive, so it’s probably no real surprise that WGD persists like it does, but at the same time I’m so damn happy it does.
The current count of global WGD face to face events is 111. That’s a massive amount, there were probably around 20 globally when WGD first kicked off. The events range from goth nights and gigs to picnics in the park, so there is something for everyone. Not only is WGD persisting, it’s growing.
Any closing thoughts as we celebrate goth in 2025?
This year, the Western world has changed, and not for the better.
We’re seeing a lot of animosity towards the trans community, those less fortunate or just different from the norm, more than in previous years. On the Bluesky account (I abandoned the X account for obvious reasons) I posted a message that this year, I would particularly like to see WGD events being a safe space for our trans family as well as the goth community as a whole.
I guess we have to be the grown-ups now that the billionaires who run this world don’t want to be…
Speaking of which, we would really love for people to follow us on the couple of socials that we exist on. You can find us here:
https://bsky.app/profile/worldgothday.bsky.social
https://www.facebook.com/worldgothday.official
Wise word of acceptance, which should be the hallmark of the goth scene. Thanks Batboy Slim!
So the “First XVII” of Leeds Goth were unveiled to a vast crowd, delighting everyone’s dark hearts for coming out midweek. We had highlighted the people, the places and the purveyors of pitch-black music who originated from Goth City (including, of course, Goth City itself!). It was all based on nominations from the public, so as a humble panel-member it was my difficult choice to suggest ways we could whittle down to the truly deserving. I hope we did them justice, and of course – every submission gets an entry on the LeedsNomad.com website, where we’ll keep the Leeds Goth Hall of Fame preserved for digital permanence.
There was an excellent turnout by the local media, with stories now available via the BBC and BBC Radio, and the regional broadsheet where I did a student placement – the Yorkshire Evening Post – even included me in their headline collage! If you spot any other media mentions, let me know in the comments…
It was an incredible day, and I was delighted to be a part of it. Full credit to organisers Mark, the Leeds Nomad, and Elizabeth of Leeds Festival of Gothica, who worked really hard with the very helpful folk at Leeds City Museum to host this exhibition. Let’s keep the black banner flying high over Leeds!
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Martin Belam
Mark Chisman
The Blogging Goth 