Seven months after its first planning victory, MOTH Club says the other application next to the venue has been refused too. The team announced the news on October 30, thanking supporters who had stuck with the campaign since March. It has promised a party, with the date and programme still to come.

The gold curtain and MOTH lettering inside the empty main hall at MOTH Club.
MOTH Club’s main hall, photographed in January 2022. Photo: Luke Dyson.

The March update had come with a warning. One application had been refused, but a second was still in progress, leaving the venue asking people to keep spreading the word. Edie Andrews and Keith Miller’s latest message says that remaining application has now been refused. They thanked Hackney Council and the planning department for their work.

  • March 26: one neighbouring application refused; another still in progress.
  • October 30: the club reports that the second application has also been refused.
  • Celebration: promised by the team, with no date or line-up in the announcement.

There are 218 days between those two updates. Anyone who lost track of the campaign after March can see why the club carried on asking for help: a decision had been reached on one application while the second still awaited its outcome. This is the later decision the team had been waiting to hear about.

Among those thanked were the 35,000 people who signed the petition, Music Venue Trust, Save Our Scene, the NTIA and Hackney Nights. The club also singled out people who kept attending shows. A petition can put a venue’s case in front of more people; an audience coming back for the next gig helps sustain the reason for having that venue in the first place.

That connection between a room and the work made around it has a recent example. Everything But the Girl’s Blue Reservoir announcement describes an album that grew from their continuing MOTH residency. Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt recorded its ten new songs largely live at RAK Studios in July. The album is due on February 19, 2027.

MOTH was the shared performance experience behind that record; RAK was the recording location. Keeping the two straight lets the venue’s contribution come into focus without turning a studio album into a live release. The influence of a club night can travel into music heard by people who have never set foot in the building. Here, that link comes from the musicians’ own account of how the album developed.

For the club’s audience, a celebration is the next thing to look out for. There are no party tickets or artists named in the statement, so wait for a separate event announcement before making plans. The team’s message celebrates the second refusal and thanks the people who stayed involved through both stages of the campaign.