Lost Music Venues

Lost Music Venues is open at the V&A South Kensington in Room 104, running from 30 May 2026 until 30 October 2027. It's a display curated by Harriet Reed, which she describes as part eulogy, part call to action and part cultural archive-in-the-making, celebrating grassroots and independent music venues as centres of creativity and design.

The display draws on the V&A's Lost Music Venue Archive, bringing together press cuttings, tickets, photographs and objects that belonged to the people who played and worked in these spaces. Among them are Adidas Superstar trainers worn by DJ Slamma in 1994, a T-shirt for The Damned from the 1990s, a photograph of Pete Doherty backstage at The Mean Fidder and handwritten lyrics by Noel Gallagher for Oasis's 'Half The World Away'.

Designer Misty Buckley has built an immersive set around the objects, recreating a grassroots venue with a leather green-room sofa, a graffitied toilet cubicle and a leopard-print booth from Birmingham's Run Runner. Oral histories from figures like Plastic People founder Ade Fakile play out as you walk through. The work also looks at the challenges the sector faces, from property development to licensing restrictions and over-policing, and ends with an interactive quiz that sends you to one of five still-open UK venues.

It's free to visit and you don't need to book. The V&A is open daily from 10:00 to 16:00, and the display runs until 30 October 2027, so there's plenty of time to fit it in.