New home for independent music venue

AN under-threat independent music venue facing eviction from its building looks like it has found a new home nearby.

Little Buildings, in Newcastle’s Ouseburn, is an intimate bar, live venue and rehearsal space for up-andcoming bands.

In November, its managers revealed their landlord would not be renewing the tenancy beyond April 2019, as he plans to refurbish the Ford Street property and re-let it to another tenant for a considerably higher rent.

Little Buildings manager Allan Scorer pledged to keep going and try and find a new home, while hitting out at the ‘gentrification’ of Newcastle’s Ouseburn district, which he says has led to rents which independent venues can not afford.

But it looks like the search could be over, with Little Buildings posting on Facebook to say it has secured a new home in Warwick Street, Heaton, close to Ouseburn.

The post says: “We have a new home.

“From the end of January we will be starting work on the somewhat Bigger Buildings, if you will, which is located on none other than Warwick Street, just a five-minute walk from the new Star and Shadow cinema.

“We will be going hard or going home with this one as we will be able to hold in the region of 150 sweaty bodies going mental to the music you make and more.

“Later licence too so strap in, as the next adventure is already in full swing.

“We will be obviously asking for any volunteers who would be keen with a paintbrush and or hacksaw.

“Cheers for all your support throughout this madness.”

Allan told The Chronicle: “We have the Warwick Street site and basically it’s just a shell which needs toilets, walls, stage, soundproofing – a huge job – and bar, etc.”

In November, Allan launched a petition calling on people to “stand up for art” and stop Ouseburn’s “gentrification”, after he was told Little Buildings’s landlord planned to charge rent two and a half times higher than Little Buildings paid.

It reads: “Where else in the city can bands play on a stage in front of 20 people and gain confidence?

“It is not just the Little Buildings that are at risk but others like us all over the country.

“It’s time to stand up for our art. It’s time to say no to being booted out of a great area after people like us and those before us have helped make it great.”

So far, more than 3,700 have backed the petition.