Joy and chaos at the death of a music venue

All the things I couldn't say

Dreams dissolve in the cold light of this reality and I’m not ashamed to say I lost mine.

A grassroots music venue with a strong community outreach programme, frequented by artists and activists with blinding club nights. I had admired it for years before I was asked to be involved, and it broke my heart trying to hold it all together as it went under.

We desperately need spaces like The Old Abbey Taphouse, and watching more of them get swallowed up by a bottomless void of a broken economic system is challenging. How many times will we watch the places that help us grow into the adult versions of ourselves with tenderness and abandon get destroyed?

It takes me a long time to get over anything and I think I can now say that I have spent more time crying over music venues than I have about relationships. I can’t tell if that makes me a psychopath or well adjusted. A year after our last gig I am finally in the space to be able to look back on it and try to express what was happening.

Someone related to the venue said to me the other day that in some ways, it made sense to have shut before I had even started working there. Which really helped because I’ve carried a lot of guilt at being the person at the helm when it went under, but also it makes me even happier that we carried it on.

We live in a world where people pay for online dating apps, with potential partners kept behind a paywall. Music is curated for us by an anonymous billionaire’s algorithm, the money we pay for that privillege goes towards weapons. Apps designed to help people make friends attract investment because everyone is so fucking lonely.

Stubborn optimism and blind hope helped us keep open a space where strangers held sweaty hands on the dancefloor, chased new kisses pressed up against the wall and some of Manchester’s best and brightest artists performed and honed their craft.

Whether by mistake or design, the world feels like it is cutting us off from one another as giant multinational corporations swallow up independent businesses. Fighting for the pub to stay open took a gigantic toll on everyone’s mental health, because it was an impossible fight to start with, but they are the most important.

The same values and actions that made the place special, not another corporate husk dressed as a dive bar, are the same things that made staying financialy viable difficult. How many heartless and unreasonable actions have been justified with the words “it makes business sense”.

It was death by a thousand cuts and despite us putting out repeated social media posts, with the MEN even running a story on it and us hosting a fundraiser - no one really seemed to believe we would go under.

The amount of conversations I’ve had with well meaning people who would tell me it was there FAVOURITE venue, and then when I asked them the last time they went it varied from six months to four years ago. Bizarre and frustratingly normal.

We live under capitalism, and while there are many beautiful ways to nourish a space that you love, unfortunately one of the more necessary actions is to spend money. If there is a bar, club, or a coffee shop - or anyone making anything that you love - try and sprinkle some pennies over them before they dry up.

In the end the reason we decided to go quietly into that good night was because we had an offer from a much larger Manchester based business that told us they would continue to do live music. After gathering a community working group together and looking at a few different options we decided to go with the one that would allow us to pay back the independent businesses and creatives that we owed money too.

Part of us wanted to fight on and keep the impossible dream going, but it didn’t feel responsible - so we put our good faith in the people who made us that offer.

To be totally transparent I am one of the people who is owed money and is still waiting on that offer to come through, not having had contact with the people who made it since I can only assume they decided not to go ahead with it.

At the end of last event I made an impromptu speech, which I genuinely hadn’t planned at all and had no idea I’d be making. I’m really glad I kept my head enough to express gratitude.

Those spaces aren’t just made by the people running them, it’s everyone - musicians, sound engineers, dancers, bar flys, activists flyering, long term residents of the area telling a student about how the area was in the 70s, promoters, DJs, people running projects out of the space. Anyone who comes in and shares something of themselves.

I paraphrased Tony Wilson at the end of the Hacienda, to remind everyone that we are all seeds of disruption who can take root and make the space we loved again in a hundred different places.

Being open to experiences and people shaping you is what keeps you alive to the magic of the universe, even if it breaks your heart at the end of it all.

Old Abbey Taphouse, and all the people that made it what it was, irrevocably altered me. We need to all keep building spaces, no matter how temporary, that allow us to be shaped by loving chaos.

I really am fucking grateful.