Disco, dancing and divas
Sam Mellor (Emmanuel 2011) reflects on bringing music to the masses

From hosting student club nights in dingy, sticky-floored venues to heading up the marketing team for two of the most-loved festivals in the East of England, Sam Mellor (Emmanuel 2011) spoke to us about DJing, digital marketing, and the unusual demands of disco divas…
Launched in 2017, The Cambridge Club festival became renowned for serving up iconic artists across disco, funk and soul. With headliners like Diana Ross, Nile Rodgers & CHIC, Lionel Richie and Grace Jones, it was a destination for disco lovers everywhere. Meanwhile, the Strawberries & Creem festival showcased standout music line-ups across its (very different) genres — bringing global stars like Burna Boy, Little Simz, Nelly, Ludacris and Central Cee to Cambridge.
The small, dedicated team responsible for both festivals all met while studying at Cambridge. Sam spoke with us about his involvement in their inception and where his love of music began:
"My mum's a music teacher so I grew up surrounded by music. There’s a room in our house dedicated to it, with 150 instruments or so. She encouraged me to learn the piano and guitar, and then I started producing electronic music during my A-levels when I also got into DJing."
Sam grew up in Leeds, and hadn’t initially considered Cambridge as an option:
"I went to a very normal state school and hadn’t thought about applying to Cambridge until my Head of Sixth Form encouraged me. It’s a dated perception, but part of me thought I would stand out because I'm from 'up north' and I didn't go to a 'posh school'. Instead, I met all sorts of amazing, like-minded people from very diverse backgrounds who’ve become lifelong friends! Cambridge did meet some of my expectations, but charmingly so, with all the traditions and the formal dinners, the pomp and ceremony, which are unique.”
Sam’s love for music found a fresh outlet at Cambridge, alongside his interest in language — which became the focus of his academic work:
"My favourite subject at school was English Language; I just loved writing and playing around with words. The Cambridge English course is mainly literature-focused, so an admissions tutor suggested the Linguistics course, which covered much more of the content I was interested in.
My love of writing is where my involvement in music events and festivals began. I wrote concert and album reviews for the student newspapers, which helped me stay up to date with the scene.
Building a brand: from club night to festival fame
Alongside College events, soon Sam was involved in running and DJing at a weekly student club night, CREEM (Cambridge Representing Each and Every Music), which later evolved into 'Strawberries & Creem' (S&C), the events company behind a rap and dance music festival of the same name, as well as The Cambridge Club.
"Our founder Will had just graduated from Manchester University and returned to Cambridge wanting to replicate some of the nightlife he’d experienced there, so we ended up joining forces. I became the manager of CREEM, doing the promotion — back then it was all via Facebook groups, posters, and flyers in pigeonholes — and that’s where my enthusiasm for marketing began. The club itself was the type of student dive you’d expect, sweaty with sticky floors... I hope they’ve renovated the place since then! We gradually attracted more people to the team, and we’ve been running events together ever since."
The first Strawberries & Creem festival, which spun out of this club night, was held in 2014; but for Sam, his studies had to take priority:
"I didn't want to mess up my finals and I thought, 'This is a distraction', so I stepped away. For my 'real job', I wanted to spend some time focusing on my writing; I’d got a taste for doing the marketing for the club nights and liked the creativity, particularly in the digital side of promotion, which was fast becoming a powerful marketing tool.
After I graduated, I started working for a start-up that involved people renting out their driveways as a cheaper parking option — you might have heard of JustPark... Now it’s huge, but when I joined there were about 15-20 people in a little backroom office in Kentish Town. I was one of their first marketing hires, so I was press officer, community manager, social media manager — I learned the whole mix.
When I went back to working with CREEM (now S&C) in 2016, I had new creative skills and knew how to use data to make decisions and inform strategy, which was so important for the role I eventually ended up doing for the festivals.”
Sam DJing at C.R.E.E.M
Sam DJing at C.R.E.E.M
Sam DJing at a student club night
Sam DJing at a student club night
Sam and the team on-site at The Cambridge Club
Sam and the team on-site at The Cambridge Club
Gathering together onstage before the Festival
Gathering together onstage before the Festival
Laying the groundwork for headliner success
At first, Sam and the team had to make S&C work around their full-time day jobs, working for free, negotiating late nights and begging for office space wherever they could, but in 2018 all that changed.
"We received a significant investment that transformed everything, and finally the team could be offered full-time jobs. I accepted the position of Head of Marketing, and we added a second festival to our profile. The original Strawberries & Creem festival was a one-day event in June with an audience in the 18-25 bracket; it attracted big names in grime and R&B, like Skepta and Ms Dynamite, along with US hip-hop artists like Nelly and Shaggy.
But we were paying for the site for the full weekend, so we decided to make the most of our investment. Father's Day was always the Sunday after the festival, so we created a family-oriented event the day after. It was a completely different brand and audience, so overnight we had to tidy and transform the space into something new. We didn't have much money or a proper production company, which meant the team personally had to go around litter-picking and switching over the signs!"
The Cambridge Club festival, as it became known, gained traction quickly, often featuring in top UK festival guides. In the last few years, it attracted 10,000 people per day and spread across the full weekend.
"In 2020 we were acquired by Sony Music and that's when things shifted up a gear. Sony Music invested in turning both festivals into two standalone multi-day events running over consecutive weekends.
The Cambridge Club became the bigger festival in the end. Strawberries & Creem has always been very well known with the younger, more urban audience, and lots of people would travel from London for the day to see the artists. But The Cambridge Club struck a chord with its feel-good, disco identity, DJ sets and family entertainment, and there wasn't anything else like that in the region.
It soon became our main focus and we decided to press pause on Strawberries & Creem. In hindsight, we should have kept S&C as a one-day event, because the audience was only interested in coming for the day, partying hard, and going home — they weren’t all that keen on camping in a field! The Cambridge Club was far more suited to that site because that crowd embraced the full outdoor festival experience."
Kenny Allstar at S&C festival
Kenny Allstar at S&C festival
Lionel Richie plays The Cambridge Club
Lionel Richie plays The Cambridge Club
The Cambridge Club festival
The Cambridge Club festival
Burna Boy at S&C festival
Burna Boy at S&C festival
Ludacris in action at S&C festival
Ludacris in action at S&C festival
Champagne, oysters and "a handsome man to shuck them"
We asked Sam about some of his highlights from The Cambridge Club over the years:
"There are far too many good memories! Nile Rodgers was a highlight because of the many amazing songs he’s been involved with, not just with CHIC but also David Bowie, Madonna, Daft Punk — lots of incredible artists. And the musicianship in that set was spectacular.
Diana Ross was iconic and as much of a diva as you would want her to be. She refused to eat any of the food on-site (which was delicious!) and we had to get a local Michelin-starred chef to come in last-minute and cook for her.
Grace Jones was hilarious. She requested champagne and oysters and, 'a handsome man to shuck them' — I don't know who fulfilled that part… She’s such an entertainer; if you've ever seen her set where she’s hula-hooping for an entire song, it's amazing."
Sadly, Sam, the S&C team, and their partners recently took the difficult decision to call an end to The Cambridge Club for the time-being. Sam reflects:
"It was such a nice festival, with a positive vibe and a brilliant fan following. The industry has been hit hard in the last two years, with its super-competitive landscape. Running an event like this is incredibly expensive and labour-intensive, and then you have economic problems that have reduced disposable incomes, so promoters are stuck between rising costs and people wanting to spend less on tickets. I think that 50 to 60 independent festivals have gone this year."

Embracing evolution
After the Strawberries & Creem festival ended in 2022, that side of the business morphed into a series of one-off events, and the S&C brand switched to focus more on content creation and artist promotion.
"S&C behaved more like an agency after that, helping to curate events and lineups, and working with record labels to promote artists in rap, hip-hop, afrobeats — basically music of black origin. Our social channels have grown massively, especially TikTok. Short-form video platforms are where a lot of people discover their music now."
Alongside his marketing work, Sam’s love of DJing has stayed with him:
"It’s funny: I now DJ at the types of events that I would never have wanted to do when I was a student. I thought I was too cool for them, but now I love doing weddings, birthdays, Christmas parties etc. You get to play the music that people want to hear, and you have a captive audience — no one is going next door instead!"
A revival for the album?
We asked Sam if he has advice for anyone interested in working in the sector:
"You need to embed yourself in the music scene. My colleague Preye also has a full-time job in A&R [Artists and Repertoire, the department of a record company in charge of talent scouting] at Sony Music. His job is to find new artists and get their music heard, so he’s perfectly placed for us to identify these people. It was a necessary part of our business model in the early days because we couldn't afford to pay the more established artists. When we booked Skepta for Strawberries & Creem in 2015, I think he charged a few thousand pounds, but by the time he played the festival he’d released some new music and suddenly he was a superstar. We had predicted he would have that trajectory, so we got a big return on our booking."
"When was the last time you sat and listened to a whole album? Streaming platforms are great for variety and discovery, but we don’t take the time to appreciate what’s being produced."
It’s undeniable that the way that we consume music has changed significantly over the last few years; with the rise of streaming giants like Spotify we have access to more music than ever before — but how much are we truly connecting with it? We asked Sam how he’d like to see the music scene and industry develop:
"I'd like to see it go back to being more about pure talent as well as digital savvy, and more live show-focussed — because there's no substitute for seeing a band or artist play live. But we need to find a way to make that more accessible again.
Whilst streaming platforms have a massive positive impact in helping to remove barriers so that anyone can be heard, I think we make less emotional connection with the music. When was the last time you sat and listened to a whole album? Streaming platforms are great for variety and discovery, but we don’t take the time to appreciate what’s being produced. The experience of listening to an album, of going to see an amazing live show, is something we need to hang on to."
After ten years of working in music events, Sam is now planning to move back into the world of tech and start-ups. Sam adds:
"The posters will remain on the wall forever though, and we’ll all have some great stories to tell from a crazy decade..."
Sam and the S&C team
Sam and the S&C team
Sam DJing at The Cambridge Club 2024
Sam DJing at The Cambridge Club 2024