Live music venues, clubs and bars feed creativity and drive social change. But they’re increasingly in danger
A few weeks ago, I decided to walk from London Bridge, up through Soho, to Marylebone, to catch a train home to the West Midlands. It was late-ish on a Friday afternoon, early spring was in the air, and I had time to kill. I was expecting the familiar mass of people finishing work, spilling out of pubs, standing around on corners, but the city streets were dead. It felt more like an early Sunday morning than the start of a weekend in what still claims to be a 24-hour city.
I am not suggesting that a walk through central London is representative of the UK, or that it is even representative of London as a whole. I could write about how I went back a couple of weeks later and a pub just outside the centre was rammed, and getting busier, at midnight on a Wednesday. Or how in Sheffield recently on a cold, wet and dreary Saturday evening, it was almost impossible to find a place to sit in any of the packed-out and steamed-up pubs. Yet there is no denying that nightlife is in trouble. Last year, 125 grassroots music venues closed permanently and 1,293 pubs shut their doors across Britain. According to the Night Time Industries Association, more than 3,000 pubs, clubs and venues have closed down in London alone since the pandemic began in March 2020.
