On a recent April evening, key players from Scotland’s nightlife are filing into The Pyramid at Anderston for an urgent forum on the future of the scene. Sam Clayton, the moderator of tonight’s panel, is moving around the Sports Hall of the former church, greeting familiar faces and friends and making sure the audio equipment is working before the discussion begins. Event organiser Colm Fletcher has ceased taking tickets at the door and signals for the event to start.
What originated as an assignment for Clayton and Fletcher’s music business course at the University of the Highlands and Islands quickly snowballed into the latest push to save the beating heart of the night-time economy. Aptly titled Save The Scene Scotland, the plan is to bring together those in the music community to solve the crisis they face because no one else seems willing to listen.
“Across the country, grassroots creative spaces are really under threat, and I think everybody here realises that,” Clayton says into the microphone. “Costs are rising across the board, funding is drying up, cultural work is increasingly undervalued. Tonight is about starting a conversation and building momentum and seeing who wants to get involved because this isn’t a one-off event.”
There were only 83 clubs left in Scotland in December 2024 down from 125 in 2020, according to the latest figures from CGA Neilson. It marks a drop of more than 30% in four years. On top of that, pubs in Scotland are closing at twice the rate of those in England.
What is the local impact of these closures? The number of evening venues in Glasgow dropped from 375 to 351. “That’s 24 fewer places to meet, dance, and experience the city’s vibrant culture after dark,” Clayton and Fletcher shared on their Save The Scene Instagram page. Edinburgh lost 13 venues in the same period. “Every closure impacts artists, workers, and the unique character of our cities. Other towns and cities across Scotland are feeling the same impact. Something must be done.”
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The panellists paint a stark picture. Gidney initially left his bar job to work freelance full time as a sound and light technician for club nights and gigs. “It didn’t work out,” he says, citing the shrinking number of events to work. He still gets the odd freelance job but has had to go back to full-time employment elsewhere. “What’s at stake is pretty much everything,” he adds with a nervous laugh. “The venues, the scene, the DJs, the promoters, Glasgow’s status as a UNESCO music city.”
Hepburn has worked as a promoter for 15 years, including stints at The Arches before it closed and the O2 ABC before it burnt down. She says the closure of venues puts pressure on others to sustain the industry, but rising costs mean they aren’t getting paid the same anymore. She still freelances full time, but the jobs have been drying up since Covid. “The venues that we have today are so important to try and carry this, to carry this energy and vibe that the older venues just can’t do anymore,” she adds. “It’s quite devastating to see the scene in this state now.”
It was once common for people to go to cheap nights each week that had free entry and heavy drink discounts. It meant they could save up for one big gig each month. But the soaring cost of running a venue, coupled with high taxi fares and a lack of night time public transport, means those nights don’t exist anymore. Instead, people are more likely to save up and attend “one big night every three months”. “The state of the scene now, it’s falling apart,” Hepburn says.
Pulling back the curtain on what it’s like to put on an event, the promoters at the table point out that the shift in focus to big names comes with its own hidden price rises. The cost of hotels, flights and artist fees have all jumped up. “It’s like a hundred per cent inflation,” Clarke says. “But because people have less money, if you add that on to the ticket price, fewer people come.”
Even though Clarke is known for techno and electronic music, he says the punk scene and the DIY scene had a huge impact on where he is today. “It made us feel like we could just do it ourselves,” he said. “We don’t have to leave Glasgow. We can make Glasgow better. It’s so important that we fight for that now.”
As a musician and a promoter of hyper-local, small-scale events, Ledingham has also found that the revenue “just isn’t coming in”. “For us to play a show that we put so much passion and effort into and get paid £50 for a set, it just defeats you,” he says. “At the end of the day, you don’t feel like your work is valued at all.” He describes the lack of funding as “deplorable”.
“It’s something we all do because we love it; that’s why I got into it 40 years ago,” Grieve says. In addition to running Sub Club, Grieve’s passion has seen him take on a director role at the Night Time Industries Association and lead a new public-private partnership tasked with drafting a manifesto for the night-time economy in Scotland.
“The Scottish Government has no interest in any cutting edge culture,” he says. “They see culture as that traditional high culture or the kilts and shortbread culture. They don’t see what we do as being cultural in the right way.”
The running theme is that no one in the room has faith in the Scottish Government to step in. There are fears in Glasgow that by the time the regional bus strategy and taxi overprovision policy consultations come to fruition, it will be years too late to save the sector. Repeated pleas for lowering the rate of VAT on hospitality have gone unanswered.
“We have demonstrated steadfast support for culture and the arts in Scotland, with game-changing increases in funding for the sector," a spokesperson for the Scottish Government told The Herald. "The highest ever number of artists and organisations will receive regular funding from Creative Scotland this financial year – including grassroots and community culture as well as the music sector.”
It’s clear after the panel discussion, which naturally runs overtime, that working together is the only solution they see making an impact. There are pleas made for everyone to attend a local event and promises to pick up the discussion again soon. The grassroots, counterculture ethos that makes the Scottish nightlife scene one of the most iconic in Europe is the same ethos that the community is choosing to lean on now to save itself.
Clayton facilitates audience questions before wrapping up and thanking everyone for attending. “This is just the start,” he says.
Marissa MacWhirter is the editor of The Glasgow Wrap. Each morning, Marissa curates the top local news stories from around the city, delivering them to your inbox at 7am daily so you can stay up to date on the best reporting without ads, clickbait or annoying digital clutter. Oh, and it’s free. She can be found on X @marissaamayy1
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