Between redevelopment, inflation, licensing and noise complaints, keeping a nightclub afloat in London can be tricky: earlier this month Corsica Studios in Elephant and Castle joined the more than 50% of UK clubs which have been lost since 2013.
Given that context, this weekend’s opening of Eutopia, a 4,000-person independently owned nightclub and cultural venue in a former haulage warehouse in Barking, feels worth celebrating. But music fans who have been burned by the recurrent loss of the capital’s best dancefloors, from Plastic People to Printworks, might also be sceptical. Is Eutopia here to stay, or another false dawn? And are people really going to trek out to the very eastern edge of the city, 12 miles from the West End, to go to a club across a river from a sewage treatment works?
