Is London’s next big club this sewer-powered warehouse in Barking? | music

forBetween redevelopment, inflation, licensing and noise complaints, keeping a nightclub afloat in London can be difficult: earlier this month, Corsica Studios at Elephant and Castle joined the more than 50% of UK clubs lost since 2013.

Given this context, the opening this weekend of Utopia, an independently owned 4,000 capacity nightclub and cultural venue housed in a former transport depot in Barking, seems worth celebrating. But music fans, hard-hit by the repeated loss of the capital’s top dance halls, from Plastic People to PrintWorks, may also be skeptical. Is Utopia here to stay or another false dawn? And would people really go to the east end of town, 12 miles from the West End, to go to a club across the river near the wastewater treatment plant?

The Eutopia team includes many of London’s most experienced nightlife operators. One of its four founders, Will Patterson, has worked at venues and festivals including E1 and Eastern Electrics for more than two decades. Another, Tom Ringer, spent several years overseeing music bookings at East London’s Oval Space (which later closed in 2022 after the shooting).

Patterson and Ranger are confident Utopia will stay the course. “We’re on a long-term lease, and we’re growing slowly,” Patterson says. “We expect next year to be a good year, as we learn a lot and put in more shows, and then even more again in 2027. When you look at anything good [London] A setting, like The Cause or Night Tales, takes three years.

Utopia, somewhat unusually, has time on its side. Unlike many other major clubs of similar size in the post-industrial period, including Canada Water’s Printworks, Tottenham Drumsheds or Depot Mayfield in Manchester, it was not created as part of an ‘in the meantime’ scheme, whereby promoters work with developers to achieve temporary cultural use of an empty site before redeveloping it. A place like Printworks, which closed in 2023, always had a strict deadline; The prospects for a utopia in the longer term appear much more open.

Another major factor working in Utopia’s favor is the absence of locals who might complain about it: their nearest neighbors are more than a mile away. This meant they could avoid most of the noise issues that plagued many of their peers, and actually contributed directly to the demise of Elephant Studios and Castle’s Corsica, when new apartments were allowed to be built next door.

“When we met with the council and the police, especially the police, they said to us: ‘We will support you,’ because we would prefer new entertainment venues to be in areas like this,” Patterson says. “Their attitude was: Why do we give out a licence, and then have 52 weeks a year of people calling and complaining?”

The Metropolitan Police declined to comment for this article, while Barking and Dagenham Council said: “Nightclubs are often located in industrial or regenerating areas where land values ​​are lower and potential disruption is minimized. While late-night transport lines may be limited, venues remain responsible for the safety of customers when distracted.”

Their statement points to some of the trade-offs that come with Utopia’s isolated surroundings: part of a long-term trend in which cultural activity is forced further away from the inner city as neighborhoods develop, rents rise, and new housing projects are built. “The reality is that venues will be pushed to the margins,” Patterson says. “We get this opportunity because it’s far away.”

Utopia is perhaps the most extreme example of this very process that London has ever seen. It’s outside the city’s airport, even outside a London postcode, and bordered by industrial units, wetlands and Picton’s sewerage works: not the kind of place you can hop from pub to pub to club. Public transport is patchy: Eutopia is a 35-minute walk from Barking Station, and 25 minutes from Barking Riverside at the Overground end. Neither is part of the Night Tube, and the only local bus service stops at midnight.

“Yes, coming here is harder than going to a place like this [Charing Cross Road’s] “Outernet,” says Patterson, who explains that a visit to Eutopia might involve “friends getting together to share an Uber, or — in the new sober world we live in — one person driving.” This perhaps refers to the early 1990s, when Londoners had to pile into a Vauxhall Nova and head down the M25 to find a party.

“If the place is really special or I’m particularly drawn to the party, I’m happy to travel longer than an hour,” says Charlie, a 20-something dance music fan. “Especially if the venue is set up for longer events, with a variety of comfortable spaces and places to relax.” His views are shared by Daisy May, Clapton’s resident DJ. “If it was a really good lineup, and I had people to go with and I could do it at a reasonable cost, then I would definitely be willing to go to Barking,” she says.

Megan Townsend, deputy editor-in-chief of Mixmag, agrees that Londoners are becoming more accustomed to logistically complex nights out: “30 years ago, there were more clubs in central London, so of course people are traveling further now. Places like Drumsheds show that thousands of clubbers are willing to make that kind of journey.”

But Utopia’s location in the middle of an industrial area, far from busy main streets and transport links, makes matters more complicated. “I don’t really want to have to take a taxi or a bus from the station to the club,” Charlie says. “I’ve also been to places in industrial settings where there are long paths, often unlit, which seems inconspicuous to me even as a man.” Utopia has clearly taken into account safety risks – from doubling the amount of time security staff remain on shift after an event, to installing temporary sidewalk lighting from Utopia to nearby stations – but the fact that such mitigation measures are necessary remains impossible to overlook.

Utopia’s founders say they want to manage things so expertly that concerns eventually fade into the background. They spent £1.5 million on the space itself, designed by the team behind Glastonbury’s San Remo area. Its 4,000-person capacity has also been split across a variety of modular and intimate spaces, suitable for everything from nightclubs to film screenings and community events, rather than one huge, impersonal space. “I think everyone would say 600 people is the perfect size: big enough to immerse yourself in, but small enough to feel intimate,” explains Tom Ringer. “But the reality is that running a venue of this size is very hard work unless you’re Live Nation or AEG, which can afford to take losses.”

Initial signs look positive, with the variety of events offered by promoters like Appetite and Gen Z up-and-comers, and World Dance’s impressive sales. But Utopia’s lack of corporate backing (another stark contrast to other developers and private equity-funded spaces) means there’s little room for complacency. “It’s like people see a new restaurant and say, ‘We should check it out,’ and then six months later they see it’s closed,” Ringer says. “Go check it out, back it up.”

Patterson and Ranger are keen to confront the pessimism that can sometimes affect Londoners’ perceptions of nightlife. “We know the economy has been stressed for most people,” Ringer says. “But we still have the ability to engage in something new and exciting. We hope people will come with us on this journey.”