A female-run live music venue promising the local community a stake in its runnings is set to open in Lewisham by the end of 2023.
Sister Midnight is the passion project of Lenny Watson, Sophie Farrell, Lottie Pendlebury, who have been searching for a venue to house the concept since 2021.
Taking over a former working men’s club in Catford, The Brookdale Club, the venue will boast a 250-capacity performance space as well as an outdoor yard, rehearsal and recording studios, and a community cafe.
Holly O’Mahony speaks to Lenny Watson, founder of Sister Midnight, to find out more…
Holly O’Mahony: How did Sister Midnight originate? Tell us about your campaign to launch it as a community live music venue.
Lenny Watson: Before we launched our campaign, Sister Midnight was a tiny record shop and basement music venue on Tanners Hill in Deptford, which I’d founded in 2018.
I took over the space from a previous record shop where I’d been volunteering for a few years. I was so passionate about how important this space was as a hub for the local community – particularly local creatives – that I decided to take over the lease, and that’s how Sister Midnight was born.
I ran that space for two years, but when the pandemic hit we were forced to close permanently. It gave me time to reflect on how I could re-establish Sister Midnight in a way that would be more resilient and sustainable, and that was how I landed on our new co-operative, community-owned model.
The whole campaign has grown from that question of how a cultural space can be sustainable in London these days, and still put community and creativity at the forefront of everything.
HOM: Who else is involved with Sister Midnight?
LW: The core team is just three of us: myself, Lottie Pendlebury and Sophie Farrell. We’ve also got about 15 local people who are part of the Community Advisory Committee supporting us voluntarily on an ad hoc basis.
HOM: What else are you juggling alongside this?
LW: We all have other jobs, although me and Sophie recently took a leap of faith and quit our main jobs to go fully freelance and focus more on Sister Midnight! Lottie is the lead singer of south London band Goat Girl.
Last year she was doing Sister Midnight work from a tour bus whilst she was on the road supporting Sam Fender at arenas across the UK, and she’s currently juggling writing an album alongside all the work she does for the campaign.
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Sophie is a professional videographer and editor, and also a founder of the DJ collective Social Records Society, who she DJs with regularly. I’m a tutor at ICMP (a music university in west London), I run a tiny record Label for fun, and I’m also training as a co-operative practitioner. So we’ve all got plenty of things we’re busy with, but Sister Midnight is our main focus these days.
HOM: Tell us a bit about the journey you’ve been on to find a home for Sister Midnight.
LW: Originally we were trying to buy the freehold of the Ravensbourne Arms on Lewisham High Street.
It had been on the market for a number of years, with an asking price of £3M. That turned out to be a lot more than the building was worth, and the owners just weren’t willing to sell for a fair market price, so we walked away.
So many people have shown us a huge amount of generosity by investing in our share offer, and we felt that even if we’d raised the whole £3M, putting everyone’s money toward such significant private gain wasn’t in line with our ethos.
HOM: You’re now opening inside Catford’s Brookdale Club, a former working men’s club. What drew you to this space?
LW: We were introduced to the space through Lewisham Council, which owns the space through a subsidiary company. The building has the potential to accommodate all the plans we had for the Ravensbourne Arms and more!
HOM: The move is still temporary though, isn’t it? How long do you have the lease for?
LW: Lewisham Council has offered us a 10 year lease, with a minimum term of seven years, and peppercorn rent for the entire time, so we won’t pay any rent for the entire length of the lease, which is incredible.
In exchange, we have to carry out the renovation works to bring the site back into use. It’s pretty dilapidated, so there will be significant costs attached to this, but it’s still cheaper than renting an equivalent space from a commercial landlord.
Eventually, the site will be redeveloped as part of the Catford Town Centre Regeneration programme, but in the meantime we can use it to establish our community owned venue and start building a track record of delivering on all the cultural and community benefits that we know a space like this can offer.
Since we won’t be paying rent, we’ll be aiming to build cash reserves that can help us pursue our ultimate goal of owning a permanent space in the future.
HOM: As well as hosting live music, your plan is to open the venue as a community hub. What sort of activities will you be running during the daytime?
LW: Yes, we’re planning to run a strong community programme as well, which will include things like skills training workshops, reading groups, matinee gigs for parents and young children, supper clubs, and loads more.
We’re open to everyone’s ideas on how we can use the space to benefit to as many people as possible, and widen participation in live music and the arts.
HOM: Tell us about the name of your organisation and venue, Sister Midnight. How did you choose it?
LW: It’s actually the name of a song from Iggy Pop’s debut 1977 album, The Idiot. When I first opened the record shop back in 2018, I was flicking through my record collection, looking for inspiration for a name – and I just loved the sound and the feel of the name Sister Midnight.
It turned out to be a fortuitous choice as we’re now a female-led organisation, so we love that the name, whilst also being a familiar pop culture reference for many, evokes ideas of sisterhood; women banding together and working towards a shared goal.
HOM: Ultimately, what do you hope Sister Midnight offers the local community that they didn’t have before?
LW: We’re hoping to offer them the chance to have democratic ownership over an accessible, affordable and inclusive music venue.
Amidst an increasingly challenging economic climate that has been slowly dismantling the UK’s grassroots music landscape, we want Sister Midnight to be south London’s answer to a growing movement of community businesses that are creating a blueprint for how cultural institutions can be future-proofed.
Music venues can be transformational opportunities for communities when they’re done right, with local people prioritised over profit, and that’s what we want to bring to south London.
Sister Midnight is opening at The Brookdale Club in Catford Centre, London SE6 4JY. For more information, visit: www.sistermidnight.org/
