Kings Place — Local services in London

There is very much which is good about Kings Place but sadly it is a venue lacking in character and atmosphere.

The scale and internal architecture of the place is that of an airport terminal or an out of town shopping centre. You feel that you are being inducted into a cultural consumer experience. The paradox though, is that there is very much more to the venue than this. The programme of musical events is curated with exquisite sensitivity and great passion and imagination.

There are artists performing here that very few other venues in London are either willing or able to showcase, and on top of that the ticket prices themselves are highly affordable. Much as I admire and would wish to support the institution, I feel like I am attending a seminar in a We Work office.

Sometimes it even seems like the performers themselves realise this. It is not a venue that elicits connection between performer and audience. The performers really actually have to work hard to overcome the life-sucking sterility of auditoria. Some performers, such as artists like Le Vent Du Nord, achieve this. Others seem to surrender and their sets can seem perfunctory.

I am truly sorry Kings Place. I love the concept and the sound engineering is top quality and I will keep coming but the venue is just...

We call upon Kings Place and its commercial arm, Green & Fortune, to cancel the Lockheed Martin-sponsored arms-industry conference, Defence In Space, on October 28th and 29th, 2025

Lockheed Martin is the world's largest arms dealer and is the proud principal provider of F-35 fighter planes to the Israeli military. These planes are then used to slaughter civilians in Gaza and in cruel conflicts around the world. According to Amnesty International and multiple other sources, F-35s were used in an Israeli attack on Al-Mawasi in July 2024 that killed 90 Palestinians and wounded another 300.

Kings Place is an important multi-arts venue that has become a vital space for a large and diverse community of artists, audience members and partner organisations. This year, many people from this community will have attended, or performed as part of, Kings Place’s Earth Unwrapped series. This series carries the aim of “bringing artists together to explore our wounded planet and how collectively we can seek healing.” The presence of a defence industry conference at this very same venue, with a sponsor which has wilfully and profitably played its part in the death of multiple civilians, throws this series and its aims into a much...

Having bewitched audiences annually with their much-loved wintertime show, Awake Arise, two of the most engaging and inventive acts on the English folk scene Lady Maisery and Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith return to Kings Place with their hotly anticipated next alchemic collaboration: an essential incantation to the summertime. Award winning trio Lady Maisery (Hannah James, Rowan Rheingans and Hazel Askew) have for nearly a decade produced “some of the most exquisite, thrilling work in the English folk scene” (The Guardian). The beguiling musical partnership of Jimmy Aldridge & Sid Goldsmith complete the powerful line-up. With more folk songs collected about the month of May than any other time apart from Christmas, the charismatic supergroup embark on a journey to mark this season in song.

There is of course morris, mayday and magic. There is also ritual, rave and cider with Rosie. There are countryside cuckoos and city foxes. There is fear for our warming planet alongside the promise of ripening fruit. As with their extremely popular wintertime show, the Awake Arise midsummer offering is a multi-layered, surprising and essential incantation to long summer days and...