A new exhibition exploring the UK's lost music venues is heading to London
RIP London Astoria
A new exhibition at the V&A focuses on the music venues the UK has lost since the 1980s.
If you can count your gig-going years in decades rather than years, you will have likely noticed some of your favourite old spots have disappeared.
Lost Music Venues at the V&A South Kensington is all about those long-lost spaces. We’re talking about clubs, classic concert spaces and community halls.
50 of these places are featured, through upwards of 150 objects.
Lost Music Venues has been put together in collaboration with the Music Venue Trust, and members of the public. Back in May 2025, the V&A asked for submissions of “artefacts and music ephemera” to help honour the “cultural legacy” of those lost venues.
There are tickets, photos, posters and — no surprise given this is the V&A — items of clothing that evoke long gone moments in music culture.
Some of the venues featured include Madame Jojo’s, the Legends nightclub and Plastic People.
Lost Music Venues is split into four sections that take us through from the 1980s scene of the Hacienda and London Astoria through to the additional difficulties Covid-19 placed on these venues.
“Music venues – be they gig spaces or nightclubs – are not only the lifeblood of the music industry but an integral part of the creative sector,” says Harriet Reed, the V&A’s Curator of Contemporary Performance.
The exhibition takes up a relatively small part of the V&A, but there’s no charge for visiting this one. You’ll find Lost Music Venues in Room 104, in the Theatre & Performance section of the museum.
It opened on May 30th, and will run until May 22nd, 2027.
Alongside awareness-raising projects like this exhibit, the Music Venue Trust is also behind The Grassroots Levy, a voluntary £1 ticket price bump added to ticket sales of gigs over 5000 capacity intended to help smaller venues stay afloat.
Other exhibitions you can catch at the V&A’s various sites at the moment include Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends, Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art and The Music is Black: A British Story.
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