It started with a web search for Passing Clouds, the iconic East London venue that was shuttered in 2016. If you’ve never been to a Passing Clouds night, well, brother/sister/friend, you missed out. I was trying to find info on the efforts to reopen any nights they were running at satellite venues, but the webpage was not there. The Facebook page was frozen somewhere in June. 

For poet and musician Joshua Idehen, the clubs and community spaces of East London are close to his heart: safe spaces where he hung out, met other creatives, made friends, first performed and developed as an artist.

As gentrification started to spread east of central London, these spaces started to disappear, and with them went the collective memory of all the things that took place in them, the art created and friendships forged. When the key venue in Dalston’s community, Passing Clouds, was forcibly closed, Joshua went searching for information about it and found nothing. Another Great Night Out was born out of the desire to archive, document and remember these lost spaces.

As of 2015, 50% of clubs, bars, pubs and social venues in London have been shut down. East London, like the once vibrant walls of Passing Clouds, has seen its colour run out, save grey and brown brick. These places were more than just watering holes for the city’s multicultural working/middle class: they were music hubs, arts spaces, community halls, social meeting points, landmarks and, most importantly, fond, favoured memories. London forgets easily, especially its counter culture, and in an age where everything is recorded, it seems a miscarriage of justice that there was no central place for people to find information and media on these vibrant venues and the important activities that took place in them. Another Great Night Out is a start at preserving, and remembering, and celebrating these places. We start with Passing Clouds.

Joshua on the genesis of the project

Speaking Volumes worked with Joshua to get a Heritage Lottery Grant to create the website which collects together music, photos, posters and artwork, and memories of people who played, performed and attended activities at Passing Clouds. To go along with this material, Joshua commissioned six poets who had connections with the venue to write work about their memories and experiences of it. As well as having the text of these poems available on the site, we filmed each poet reading outside the shut up and as so far unused Passing Clouds building.

Head over to AnotherGreatNightOut.com to check out all of the archive material and commissioned poems, and keep an eye out for the next venue that Joshua looks to arhcive and remeber.

Generously funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, produced by Speaking Volumes.