…because there was never supposed to be one in the first place and here we will explain why.

London has ambitions to become the number one global destination for 24-hour culture and entertainment – There are bold ambitions but championed by the Mayor of London and also Amy Lamé, London’s very own Night Czar appointed in 2016. The challenge to achieving this lies not just in the demand from punters to actually want to stay out and enjoy the benefits of a 24 hour city, but moreso the ability for a city like London to logistically make this happen. In essence:

(1) is there the space for this to be achieved and

(2) politics

Space in London as we know if at a premium. Any vacant land is snapped up and turned into a residential developments. This is quite often at odds to local planning policy where we continue to see more and more homes being built slap bang in the middle of city / town centres, which are typically designated as commercial business districts. The second reason is more relevant to the purpose of this blog post and relates to POLITICS.

Croydon is in a state of urban regeneration led through major developments including the recently and long awaited Westfield getting the green light. We (Cellar Door) a Croydon events based company and having lived here all our lives. Under various guises we have been running events in Croydon since the 1999.

We have seen the changes over this time and remember popular (and some not so popular!!) venues of days gone by including Pals, Joe Bananas, Colosseum, The Cartoon, Blue Orchid, Black Sheep Bar, Loop, Edwards, Heroes, Valbonne, Tiger Tiger to name but a few.

In 2015 together with our good friend from school, we set up another company called ‘The Croydon Creative’, where we launched ‘Lost Format Society’, the award winning rooftop cinema and bar. More recently under Cellar Door, we opened ‘Coffee Shotter‘ a new vegan / vegetarian restaurant on Croydon High Street.

Given our background and engagement with creatives in London, we sought to find new possible locations in south London, namely Croydon that could form new event spaces. Our searches took us to various spots and one we came across was the underground unit at Q-Park Car Park in Croydon. It is a large open space that we soon learnt was used primarily by the traders operating out of Surrey Street market, one of the oldest markets in Britain.

We discovered that the landlords were Croydon Council and set up a meeting with Culture Director, Paula Murray to pursue our interest in opening this up to the community as a mixed use space. This is contrary to incorrect assumptions made by some that there was some sort of contract on offer to run the space by the council and Cellar Door were appointed without due process. Over a period of 6 months we also met and liaised closely with the market manager Fiona, who shared our ambition to open the space up for additional uses but only where any activations wouldn’t unreasonably compromise the use of space by the traders. It was agreed in principal that with any Premises Licence granted to use the site, day to day activities would have to be in consultation with the market manager on an ad hoc basis. Mixed use activities would include but not limited to film screenings, art installations, talks, dance performances, immersive theatre productions, music events, fashion shows, children’s soft play activities during the summer. Upon submitting the Premises Licence application in December 2017, we met with the various licensing authorities and through consultation the application was adapted with no representations submitted by the authorities. This however was not before the inappropriate and irresponsible behaviour of local councillors who took the opportunity to attempt to score political points by labelling the proposal a ‘nightclub’ and on this basis object to our application.

The scare tactics employed by the Conservatives led by Cllr Pollard and Ben Joce is evidence of all things wrong with why London will struggle with it’s ambition to ever become a 24 hour cultural destination to compete with the likes of Berlin and Amsterdam.

Within a few days of the application being submitted, we were surprised and somewhat amused to discover that a campaign had been launched by Cllr Pollard and Ben Joce to oppose a ‘new nightclub’:

Instead of presenting a balanced viewpoint and representing the collective interests of their community, they instead set about creating YouTube videos and petitions to shut down the project before it had even begun and without any basis to understand our objectives:

It has never been an ambition of Cellar Door to own or run a nightclub hence why we found the campaign amusing. The mis-representation was comical, especially since there had been no attempt to approach / contact us to relay any concerns they may have had.

There is a reason why the London nightclub scene has struggled in recent years and it is the attitude of the councillors / political campaigners like Pollard and Joce that spread fear. What made their campaign all the more confusing is the fact that these politicians appear to say what suits the political climate at the time. It wasn’t too long ago that they were campaigning for the local council to relax licensing controls:

Even when we amended our application to remove any Dj led activities that could take place in this space, it didn’t stop Cllr Pollard furthering her own agenda and wish for political fame by carrying out interviews with local publications:

Ultimately our Premises Licence application went to committee and was APPROVED under our revised proposal, which was still being challenged by the Conservatives:

Conservative rep Ben Joce was present at the committee meeting and we informed him directly in this meeting that his actions and those of his conservative colleagues were irresponsible through the mis-representation of the use. As we stated in our application, we had the ambition of creating this new mixed use event space, as a means to bring creative art based activities into the heart of Croydon to promote our rich culture. This is in line with the Mayors own desire to promote ‘London is Open‘. There is an overwhelming lack of space in town centres for creative output and expression. Art budget are being cut and creative organisations are increasing coming under immense pressure to operate in a non-small business friendly environment, in particular through rising rents, business rates and competition for space with residential developments. Coupled with this where art / creative organisations face targeted attacks and obstacles to promote the different creative mediums, the Mayors ambitions will be one that continues to see London lagging behind it’s European counterparts.

Courtesy of Sam