The Warren is taking a year off in 2022 and will not be running during May’s Brighton Fringe. The Warren on The Beach will not take place this summer either. Why? The short version is that we bit off more than we could chew in 2021.
The previous year we had taken a risk and opened a new venue during a pandemic. We spent a lot of time and money on designing Covid-secure infrastructure and building it on Brighton seafront. We were one of a tiny handful of venues open that summer. Artists loved having a place to perform and audiences loved having a safe place to see live shows.
We tried to build on this model the next year, adding even more to our offering in the hope of making it even better. As a company we have spent the past 16 years successfully running Fringe venues and growing The Warren into a much-loved multi-venue festival site. But we got it wrong in 2021.
We overstretched ourselves and we ran into financial difficulties. As a result, we were left unable to pay a number of freelance contractors and artists on time. We sincerely regret the distress this caused.
We have always championed artists and have helped provide places for the arts to happen, from our beginnings running tiny Fringe venues to today, when we host up to 200 companies every year. It was never our intention to let anyone down and we will ensure it doesn’t happen again.
We are now taking time out to learn from what happened and remodel what we do to best serve everyone involved.
We will continue to run our year-round beachfront venue The Electric Arcade, and will continue to offer a stage to emerging theatre-makers, comedians, musicians and other acts. Fans of The Warren will find the same great performances, bars and buzz here.
We hope that by scaling back this year we can focus on what we do well, learn from what went wrong and return with confidence in 2023.
Thanks for sticking with us and hope to see you at a show soon.