London’s Vault festival, which has kickstarted countless theatre and comedy careers in a warren of performance spaces beneath Waterloo station, has announced its closure.
The festival had been under threat after its venue-landlord, The Vaults, decided to pursue alternative uses for the tunnels the festival has used since 2012. Vault festival launched a fundraising campaign in 2023 and had secured a new longterm home in central London that was due to open later this year. However, its funding has now fallen through, leading to the cancellation of plans for a new venue and a continued festival. Redundancies have been made across the organisation.
Vault festival, which gave artists a favourable box-office split, provided a platform for fledgling companies to put on short runs of shows, which often bloomed into hits at the Edinburgh fringe. Last summer’s Edinburgh theatre successes Heart, High Steaks, Santi & Naz and It’s a Motherf**king Pleasure were all developed at the Vault festival. No ID, which explored Tatenda Shamiso’s experience as a Black transgender immigrant in the UK, went from the Vault festival to London’s Royal Court theatre in 2023 and is currently being adapted for television. Joseph Charlton’s play Anna X, inspired by the case of “fake heiress” Anna Sorokin, also started life in a tiny space beneath Waterloo; it was later staged in the West End with Emma Corrin.
The festival has also hosted performances by top comedians including Desiree Burch, James Acaster, Elf Lyons, Joe Lycett, Sofie Hagen and Mae Martin. It has put on more than 3,000 diverse shows including dance, cabaret and musical productions. The festival’s inaugural head of programming, Bec Martin, recently took over at the influential New Diorama theatre where she is directing another Vault hit, Katie Arnstein’s The Long Run, from the end of this month.
Vault Creative Arts, the charity behind the festival, said it had been in conversations with multiple social investors and was pursuing a “blended fundraising strategy”. Last week, however, the organisation learned that it had failed to secure the principal funding required: “This prevents Vault from utilising the other additional funds being raised alongside the social investment and Vault are therefore left without the reasonable prospect of sufficient funds to continue operating, nor the time to be able to seek alternative investment. The closure means that Vault has had to enact redundancies across the organisation.”
The charity said it will continue to operate the venue The Glitch in Waterloo, which particularly supports emerging artists and LGBTQ+-led collectives.
Vault’s CEO, director and co-founder Andy George said: “We are devastated, we’re proud and we’re grieving. Twelve years ago, we set out with a mission to make the creative industries of the UK more diverse, more experimental, more inclusive, more joyful and more embracing of the talents and ideas that emerging artists have to offer. I feel extremely proud that we’ve achieved that mission through our work and that we are leaving the creative industry in a different place to how we found it.
“We had an exceptional team, we had a fantastic new home and we had the vision of how to get there. To come so close but ultimately fall short is agonising. We are grieving what could have been and what will be lost for future generations. I am certain that the impact from the loss of Vault festival will be felt across the entire UK creative sector for years to come.”
