Save The Tavern


Worrying times in London at the moment, and to me, it feels like it’s been coming for a while. Living in Liverpool, but often working in London, and having previously lived in London for 15 years, it’s sad to see it become other worldly. Looking back London was a place of excitement, somewhere where you went that was accessible, diverse and full of life. Now it just feels corporate and unobtainable.

An offshoot of this is a project I was working on with Re-Dock last year, Happy Birthday RVT, celebrating 150 years of the Royal Vauxhall Tavern. The RVT is the UK’s oldest LGBTQ pub and iconic performance space, Towards the end of the project, the venue was sold to Immovate, a re-development company with a history of turning turning places into luxury flats and hotels.

The result is the launch of a campaign to look out for the Future of the RVT. You can sign up at RVT.community The campaign officially launches tomorrow at the Cinema Museum in Elephant and Castle with a screening of the film that came out of the Happy Birthday RVT project, now called Save The Tavern. Here’s the trailer. With some many cultural spaces closing down and people being forced to move due to high rents, it feels like it’s time to make a stand.