Raves, Brecht and re-enacting Diana’s funeral: the White Hotel bows out as the north’s bravest music venue

​After 10 years of avant garde mayhem, the rough-diamond Salford venue is set to close. Its founders look back on their artistic free-for-all and explain how its spirit will continue

‘The White Hotel is similar to the Highlander and Keith Richards. It’s immortal,” declares Austin Collings. Collings is the artistic director of the Salford venue – housed in a former MOT garage – that over the past decade has become a generator for underground culture in the north-west. A programme that has spanned classical music ensemble the Manchester Collective, a celebration of Bertolt Brecht and Andy Weatherall’s last ever DJ set is testament to its scope. Collings, Ben Ward – the Hotel’s “caretaker” – and a tight-knit crew of friends and collaborators have built an experimental arts venue that doubles as the north’s most notorious underground nightclub.

But despite continuing to draw full houses, the White Hotel will shut up shop in January. Always on administratively shaky ground, they’re now drowning – literally. According to Salford city council’s Strategic Regeneration Framework, the White Hotel is in a flood-risk zone. “Basically,” says Ward, “it’s a swamp.” In theory, they could have hung on for a few years, but decided it was better “to go out on our own terms, long before we became a museum”.