For a metropolis with a world repute constructed on music, Manchester is enjoying a dangerously offbeat tune. Whereas its legacy continues to be being shouted about in documentaries and tourism campaigns, grassroots music venues are being erased from the panorama in actual time, with barely a nod to their historic, social, or creative relevance. Retro Bar is the newest identify to be scribbled onto the cultural kill checklist — a venue with 35 years of service to Manchester’s subcultures, music scenes, and inventive lifeblood. And now? It’s scheduled for demolition. As a result of somebody determined a multi-billion-pound science redevelopment mattered greater than the group it’ll displace.
This isn’t nearly a basement bar. It’s a couple of cultural artery being clamped shut by fits and a nefarious sample of neglect, short-sightedness and cultural vandalism that’s unfolding throughout the nation. It must be referred to as out for what it’s: a systemic difficulty that devalues tradition in favour of sterile “progress.”
The Retro Bar Case: A Wake-Up Name Disguised as a Eulogy
Retro Bar’s impending closure in July 2025 ought to by no means have been on the playing cards. Not in a metropolis that claims to champion music. Not when over 200 gigs a 12 months have rung out from its two flooring, drawing in over 20,000 punters yearly. Not when it gave early levels to Frank Turner, All the things All the things and have become the birthplace of The Chemical Brothers’ DJ profession.
However the £1.7 billion Sister Masterplan between Bruntwood SciTech and The College of Manchester has different concepts. Concepts which, conveniently, didn’t embrace any significant safety or relocation for Retro. In line with the venue workforce, the 2 websites provided as alternate options had been unworkable. They weren’t provided relocation – they had been provided what amounted to enterprise funeral prices. A nod, a handshake, and a payout for winding every little thing down. A payout which wouldn’t cowl half the prices of restarting someplace new.
The venue workforce have completed the legwork. They’ve scouted new places. They’ve stayed in conversations. However conversations are meaningless when one celebration holds the ability to bulldoze, and the opposite is left screaming into the mud.
The silence from decision-makers is deliberate. That is how councils kill tradition: not with malice, however with omission. With selective inaction. With well mannered conferences, backhanded reward and an entire refusal to know the urgency and worth of what they’re destroying.
Cultural Technique Means Nothing With out Motion
Manchester Metropolis Council has lengthy boasted about its cultural capital. On paper, the town has a “world-class” cultural technique. In observe, it’s handing eviction notices to the individuals who constructed its repute. Retro Bar is likely one of the few remaining venues actively sustaining grassroots music within the metropolis centre. And while you lose your grassroots, you lose your future.
Music Venue Belief has rightly identified the hypocrisy of councils waving the banner for music when it’s worthwhile or politically expedient – however refusing to legislate or advocate for the individuals who make it attainable. The Council’s failure to intervene meaningfully doesn’t simply replicate poorly on Manchester. It sends a message to each small venue within the UK: your heritage means nothing. Your influence means nothing. If we wish the house, you’re gone.
And the gall of all of it? The identical individuals who need Retro gone would be the first to quote The Chemical Brothers as a part of Manchester’s cultural heritage. They’ll fortunately slap their names on tourism campaigns, shout about native legends, and milk nostalgia for each drop it’s value. However in relation to doing the precise work of preserving cultural infrastructure, they vanish.
It’s not that the Council can’t defend areas like Retro. It’s that they received’t. As a result of to take action would imply standing as much as builders, pushing again on industrial stress, and acknowledging that ‘regeneration’ is usually demolition dressed up as progress.
Why It’s By no means Simply About One Venue
When venues like Retro go underneath, it’s straightforward to deal with them as remoted losses. A tragic footnote within the infinite churn of city growth. However these closures are cumulative. They erode the connective tissue that binds music communities collectively. They erase coaching grounds, disrupt trade pipelines, and tear holes in cultural ecosystems that take a long time to rebuild.
Retro Bar is an employer, coaching house, a platform for grassroots artists, a launchpad for nationwide excursions, a house for LGBT membership nights throughout Manchester Pleasure, a rehearsal and recording house, a bunch to spoken phrase performances, movie screenings and festivals. And, most vitally, it has provided all this not for revenue, however as a result of it mattered.
All the things All the things described it as a “important coaching floor.” Frank Turner pressured how Retro gave him considered one of his first actual platforms. These aren’t nostalgic endorsements – they’re statements of reality. With out areas like Retro, scenes shrink. Expertise swimming pools dry up. And the following era of artists has nowhere to begin.
The numbers again it up. A current Music Followers’ Voice survey revealed that almost 94% of Mancunians need culturally vital music venues and nightclubs to be given protected standing. The general public desires these areas to be preserved. However public will counts for nothing if councils and builders proceed to sideline it.
We Know the Options. They’re Simply Being Ignored.
Probably the most infuriating a part of this complete state of affairs is its preventable nature. Options exist already. Councils might introduce protected standing for culturally helpful music venues. They may combine cultural infrastructure assessments into each main redevelopment plan. They may guarantee viable relocation help and implement authorized frameworks that give these areas the identical type of stability given to heritage buildings and industrial tenants.
However they don’t. As a result of cultural areas, particularly ones related to youth, marginalised communities, and subcultures, nonetheless aren’t seen as economically or socially important. That’s the actual illness right here. Councils are failing to grasp that tradition is infrastructure. It’s not an add-on. It’s a core element of what makes a metropolis habitable, significant, and human.
Retro Bar’s workforce has completed every little thing proper. They’ve stayed in dialogue. They’ve provided options. They’ve rallied the group. Their crowdfunder isn’t only a determined plea for survival — it’s a rallying cry for cultural continuity. They aren’t asking for a handout. They’re asking to maintain doing what they do, in a brand new house, with dignity and help.
Conclusion: If They Can Bulldoze Retro Bar, They Can Bulldoze Something
The demolition of Retro Bar isn’t only a menace to at least one constructing. It’s a warning shot to each grassroots venue throughout the UK. If this will occur in Manchester — a metropolis synonymous with music — it may possibly occur wherever. And except councils begin prioritising cultural infrastructure with actual, enforceable safety, we’ll hold watching our music scenes be razed to the bottom.
However right here’s the hope: this isn’t over. Retro continues to be preventing. So are its supporters. And if the outrage generated by this closure will get channelled into political stress, we can change the tide. Music communities are used to being underestimated. However they’re additionally used to organising, campaigning, and surviving.
If each one of many 20,000 annual guests donated simply £2.50, Retro Bar would smash their £50,000 crowdfunding objective. Consider your donation as a democratic vote. 1 vote doesn’t matter, but when everybody parted with some digital spare change, the way forward for Retro Bar can be way more sure. Donate to the crowdfunder right here.
Article by Amelia Vandergast
