Page - 83 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 3/2017

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 3 2o17 Samantha Wilkinson, Catherine Wilkinson | Night-Life and Young People’s Atmospheric Mobilities 83 impressions of club space, such as the role of music. The author asserts that the atmospheric surroundings of clubs can open up certain possibilities of inhabiting, experiencing and copro- ducing the space, for instance dancing, that work particularly well with certain drugs. Else- where Bøhling (2015) utilises an assemblages approach in his exploration of young people’s drinking practices in the night-time economy of Copenhagen. The author contends that, in his study, participants recognised that the atmosphere was a crucial element of drinking. Bøh- ling (2015) argues that people’s capacities to initiate and sustain various social, musical, and sexual relationships are altered by the consumption of alcohol, the atmosphere, and by a set of socio-spatial objects and technologies. Elsewhere, the first author of this paper pays attention to atmospheres of darkness and light- ness (Wilkinson, S. 2017), to show how drinkscapes are active constituents of young people’s drinking occasions, rather than passive backdrops. She illustrates how young people transform dark and light drinkscapes, thereby shaping the drinking practices of themselves and others. Through looking at the interplay between the curating of an atmosphere, and the experiences of that atmosphere when bodies, and practices, are inserted into it, the paper offers a different take on the ‘drinking at home is bad, drinking in public spaces is good’ argument, with original policy suggestions. Having reviewed literature working at the intersection of atmospheres and mobilities, this paper now elucidates the methodology. Methodology The first author recruited 40 young people, aged 15-24, for multi-stage qualitative research. In some respects, the sampling strategy was purposive, as the first author aimed to recruit 20 young people from each case study location, and aimed for an equal gender distribution. She recruited the majority of participants through gatekeepers at local schools, community orga- nisations, youth clubs, and universities. She also: distributed flyers and business cards to houses and businesses in both case study locations; posted on online discussion forums concerning both areas; used Twitter and Facebook to promote the study to locals; and arranged to be inter- viewed by the host of a local radio station: Wythenshawe FM 97.2. In addition, opportunistic and snowball sampling was important. The sample predominantly consists of white partici- pants, and all participants are able-bodied; this is important to note, as later discussions of im/ mobilities may have been differently experienced by those of different abilities or ethnicities. The first author presented a palette of methods for participants to ‘opt into’ (Leyshon 2002, 182, emphasis in original), enabling participants to communicate with the researcher in what- ever way(s) they felt most comfortable with (see Wilkinson, S. and Wilkinson, C. forthcoming). The methods we draw from in this paper include individual and friendship group interviews, peer-interviews, drawing elicitation interviews, and participant observation. Hitchings (2012) argues against the idea that researching everyday practices may require alternative methods to the interview, contending that interviews provide an effective medium through which people can articulate their embodied practices. Along similar lines, Fox and Alldred (2015) contend that qualitative interviewing can identify affective bodily capacities. Our experience of using both individual and friendship group interviews lends agreement to this notion. In addition, the method of peer-interviews provided young people with an opportunity to discuss their drinking stories with a friend; young people perhaps felt more able to be ‘open’ about their