London’s LGBTQIA+ community was in shock after the sudden announcement of the closure of Above The Stage last Sunday. The venue (theatre, cabaret lounge and bar) has been an essential and much loved creative queer space for our community.
On hearing the news, London’s Night Czar, Amy Lamé, told QX:
“Our beloved LGBTQI+ venues are at the heart of life in the capital, entertaining and welcoming the community, and also employing thousands of Londoners. We’ve been working hard to protect venues, which suffered the impact of the pandemic restrictions, as well as ongoing issues of insecure leases, staff shortages and the spiralling cost of doing business. I was hugely concerned that Above The Stag theatre and bar suddenly closed over the weekend and have been in touch to offer our full support.”
QX reached out to City Hall, to ask what advice they could give to venues that were struggling to survive in this harsh climate. Their press office responded promptly, and they told QX,
“We have not had any contact from Above The Stag about this previously. We continue to encourage venues concerned about their futures to contact our Culture and Community Spaces at Risk team, which has helped more than 800 cultural spaces at risk of closure since March 2021. This help ranges from support in negotiations with landlords, to finding alternative venues or accessing funding. For example we’ve supported the Joiners Arms to secure a space in a new development alongside a temporary home while it’s being built, and QUEERCIRCLE was supported by negotiations to secure an affordable five-year lease at the Design District in North Greenwich. Since becoming Mayor, Sadiq has also introduced the most pro-nightlife London Plan the capital has ever seen and created the LGBTQI+ Venues Charter and London’s first LGBTQI+ Venues and Promoters Forum which offers support and guidance to venue operators. During the height of the pandemic restrictions, the Mayor created a Culture at Risk Business Support Fund, of which £225,000 was allocated to specifically support LGBTQI+ venues.”
To provide the best experiences, we use cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting allows us to process data such as browsing behaviour on this site. Withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
