Client: Village Underground
Project: Earth / Hackney arts centre: Licensing and Planning advisors
What were MAKE asked to do?
Located in Shoreditch, East London, Village Underground is one of the world’s most respected live music venues, club nights, event spaces, community activists and co-working spaces. They also stage life drawing classes if you’re interested! So, when they stumbled upon a 2,500 capacity disused art-deco cinema in nearby Dalston, they were excited to buy and develop the venue into a multifunction arts venue that allowed smaller and bigger acts than those at Village Underground a space to play and to ‘keep it in the family’.
Crucially, however, the new building was within a cumulative impact area restricting new licences. It also required considerable input into how it would fit with planning legislation. So, VU asked MAKE to assess whether their business model, plans and operating procedures would be enough to make them an exception to the council’s otherwise restrictive policy.
How did MAKE do it?
We undertook covert external evaluations of the operator’s existing Village Underground premises over several nights, examining security, queue management, dispersal, noise impact away from the venue.
We also then examined closely the public realm beyond the new venue to understand what the issues were locally and where these were coming from. It turned out these were from a small number of specific existing bars and nightclubs.
We mapped pedestrian flows using night-time CCTV audits and surveilled individuals who were causing problems in and around the area.
We reviewed the plans and advised how to ensure the best configuration of the building for managing the impact it might have.
We analysed crime and disorder data for the area to understand what the main issues were, their time of day, location and typology and what aspects of the night-time economy they might be linked to.
What happened next?
Crucially, because of the type of customer that this venue would be the opposite of be the typical alcohol-focused young clubber attracted to many of the venues in the area, our verdict was that the new EartH arts centre would not make problems in the area any worse. Indeed, our view was that it would instead contribute to positive change in Dalston, which had been declining for a number of years. The venue was granted planning and licensing in line with our recommendations (including suggested conditions). As far as we are aware it is the largest venue in London to be granted an exemption from a cumulative impact policy and is now a very successful venue whose customers do not cause problems and where surrounding businesses benefit substantially from the extra footfall.
What unique value did MAKE bring to this project?
Because of our greater knowledge around night-time placemaking as well as crime analysis, planning and licensing expertise we were able to identify a range of wider measures that the venue could implement (such as partnerships with the community, investment in a business improvement district and marketing Dalston to a new demographic) that went well beyond simply being a well-run venue.