"The best school disco you never got to go to": Inside the fight to save MOTH Club

A beloved Hackney music venue could get new neighbours. More than 13,000 fans are trying to block them moving in

Illustration by @cllmrolodex

Morning — for years the Instagram feed of the MOTH Club consisted only of arty posters for upcoming gigs and messy photos of the night before. That was until September 19 of this year, when the account posted something out of the ordinary. “🚨 📣 ✉️ To any Hackney based MOTH Club lovers out there, we're calling for your support,” the post began. The venue owners went on to explain they’d discovered a planning application had been submitted for a flat block right next door. To them, the ramifications were clear: the new neighbours would inevitably shut down MOTH with noise complaints.

Today we bring you a piece by music journalist Emma Wilkes, who’s previously reported on the troubles at the Brixton Academy for the Spy. This time she’s been working on a story that sums up the grim trade-offs presented by London’s housing crisis. On the one hand, Hackney is crying out for a boost to its housing supply, as rents and prices in the borough surge far beyond the capital’s average. On the other, both bands and fans tell Emma that the MOTH is a critical part of London’s gig scene. “The research and development arm of the music industry,” is how one describes the venue.

But what’s especially galling to MOTH campaigners: the developer behind the plans seems to have sidestepped affordable home requirements.

Emma’s look at the fight to save the MOTH Club is below.

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Inside the fight to save MOTH Club

By Emma Wilkes

A rendering of one of the proposed flat blocks next to the MOTH Club (on the right with the poppy)

Everyone who sets foot in Hackney’s MOTH Club remembers its sparkly gold ceiling. It’s a space that could have looked like it was frozen in time; its old school red and black tiling and wooden walls a relic of its past life as a military veterans’ club. This room is a far cry from the soulless black boxes that often serve as music venues in London; it has character, an old school, distinctively British one, to be more exact. If a village hall could be trendy, this is what it would look like.