After six years by which it’s established itself as London’s most bold and visually spectacular new venue for digital music, post-industrial superclub Printworks – a hulking 6,000-capacity advanced in Canada Water, as soon as residence to the printing presses of the Every day Mail and Night Commonplace – closed its doorways for the ultimate time on Monday evening.
Like numerous inner-city membership closures in current reminiscence, this was a choice prompted by the business calls for of gigantic property builders: over the subsequent 4 years the 53-acre web site by which Printworks sits shall be flattened and rebuilt by builders British Land and AustralianSuper, remodeling it right into a glittering array of upscale outlets, eating places, places of work and luxurious flats.
However not like most different shuttered golf equipment, Printworks is – probably – coming again. Simply earlier than a shock headline set from Bicep at Monday evening’s closing get together, the venue’s operators Broadwick Stay introduced a provisional cope with British Land for a revamped Printworks to reopen on the redeveloped web site in 2026.
Simeon Aldred, co-owner and head of technique at Broadwick Stay, says he’s heard quite a lot of “the basic gentrification narrative the previous few weeks: horrible landlords closing you down, these sorts of destructive vibes. However to be trustworthy, British Land invited us in, [the creation of Printworks] was as a lot their concept as ours. So I need to give them some credit score for that. We are able to’t announce that [the reopening] is unquestionably occurring, we haven’t signed any contracts, however the form of the ideas for a deal are there, and we’re going to be placing in for planning permission within the subsequent few weeks.”
This embody Printworks’ cavernous most important corridor being retained in one thing like its unique kind – Aldred says he has architectural mockups which he might present me, however for his insistence on sharing them with area people teams round Canada Water earlier than making them public.
Membership promoters and property builders, it’s truthful to say, don’t usually make for such amicable bedfellows. Printworks’ opening in 2017 adopted a decade by which the UK misplaced half of its nightclubs, and London over a 3rd of its grassroots music areas, in lots of circumstances as a result of the buildings they occupied have been offered off or redeveloped.
Broadwick Stay’s enterprise mannequin has flipped that battle on its head: by teaming up with builders reasonably than opposing them, they’ve been in a position to function a succession of cultural venues on a “in the meantime” foundation, within the hole between a web site being acquired by builders and the bulldozers transferring in. It’s a symbiotic trade: dancers get momentary entry to in any other case unattainable areas, whereas the cultural capital they convey with them helps to put the groundwork for the encircling space’s eventual redevelopment.
This method has been wildly profitable, not less than financially: Broadwick’s endeavours with Printworks have seen round £200m of funding flooding in from builders throughout the UK, together with injections of capital from Grand Theft Auto makers Rockstar Video games. With that backing, Broadwick has amassed a portfolio of greater than 25 venues across the nation, from the ten,000 capability Depot Mayfield in Manchester, residence to the Warehouse Venture, to new enterprise The Beams in east London’s Royal Docks.
It has additionally, as anybody who’s visited Printworks in its six-year run can attest, created spectacles of unparalleled scale and excellence, with dance music followers handled to persistently stacked lineups, pummelling sound and dizzying visuals. Specifically, the venue’s skinny, vertiginous most important room, with a three-storey video display positioned behind the stage and spotlights dancing over its vertical layers of uncovered metallic and concrete, appears like clubbing redesigned for the TikTok age: as Róisín Murphy shimmies her method via an amapiano-tinged re-edit of Sing It Again on Monday’s closing evening, numerous dancers round me maintain their telephones up portrait-style to seize the second.
What’s proved trickier, it appears, is guaranteeing that these areas endure past a 15-second social media excessive or developer-imposed cycles of demolition and reconstruction. “We at all times knew it was going to be an experiment,” says Aldred, “However as quickly because it began getting profitable, we began speaking to British Land about what the longer term is likely to be.”
This was clearly not a simple dialog: when plans have been submitted to Southwark Council in 2021, the supply of a cultural house akin to Printworks was notably absent. When the venue’s meant closure was introduced in 2022, Aldred and Broadwick needed to chew their tongues as offended tweets rolled in and “Save Printworks” petitions circulated, unable to disclose that they have been already engaged in extremely delicate behind-the-scenes talks for the venue to return in some kind. “British Land have a accountability to the redevelopment of the entire web site,” Aldred explains, “so what they will’t do, to be truthful to them, is simply protect this huge sacred cow for me, and our slim viewers. They’ve a job to do.”
What that viewers may appear to be when Printworks (hopefully) reopens in 2026 is one other query. Those that go clubbing to flee from or defy the ceaseless pull of worldwide capitalism may already discover Printworks just a little too sanitised for his or her tastes: encompass it with a shiny utopia of luxurious flats, boutique inns and unique eateries, and the individuals who really feel invited to or excluded from the get together are certain to shift even additional.
“There are most likely people who find themselves extra radical than us round dance music,” admits Aldred, nodding to the rising pattern for sex-positive clubbing as one instance. “Would I do sex-positive events in our venues, given our landlord relationships? In all probability not, as a result of there are youthful teams doing that actually properly already, in type of area of interest gaps. However would we take a few of these folks and amplify them and assist them step as much as larger areas? Completely.”
Whereas Printworks’ monetary returns are evident, its cultural influence is maybe more durable to parse: after I converse to Ajay Jayaram, Broadwick’s head of music, the query of its connections to and relationships with London’s wider membership tradition really feel much more urgent.