by Jesse Frizzell, Second year, Geography
There’s almost 100 live music venues in Bristol, yet few places where you would expect to stumble across experimental live music, exhibitions, DJs, vinyls, workshops, markets and fluorescent artwork all under one roof. Least of all beneath a multi-storey carpark in Cabot Circus - and it's there in the name. Strange Brew is an unlikely amalgamation of culture and creativity, where boundaries are blurred between genres and creative worlds, and where multi-taskers thrive.
Only a couple of months old to Bristol, I soon became bored of the regular triangle club circuit (sue me), but just beyond the familiar sprawl of Cabot Circus I stumbled across something I hadn’t realised I was even looking for; an antidote to my rapidly developing aversion to sticky floors and listening to Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten for the 47th time. That night.
In just 5 years, Strange Brew has achieved something that some venues fail to do in a decade. It has become a space where the city’s creative communities overlap and merge - and particularly, where queer artists and audiences have found space to perform and congregate. If one thing has become clear to me whilst writing this article, it's that Strange Brew doesn’t seem particularly interested in staying in its lane, and perhaps it is this refusal to fit into one category that makes it so welcoming for people who don’t always fit neatly into one either.
For many of the venue's regular artists, this exemption from categorisation seems to extend into the actual experience of performing there. For Bristol based Dj and Strange Brew staple, Chez de Milo, its value lies in the freedom and encouragement to experiment, take risks and bring something entirely different to Bristol’s already vibrant music scene.
Milo explains that ‘Somewhere with such an open-minded approach to music… and the freedom for everyone to be themselves, both musically and personally’ is what makes a venue special, and that ‘the laid back atmosphere and sense of community’ is a big draw for returning artists and audiences alike. In the opinion of Milo, Strange Brew has succeeded in ‘creating a space where people can come together around music without having to fit into any kind of mould.’
For Liam from Persuasion, this feeling is palpable even from the stage. Playing music becomes all the more rewarding for him when the audience is visibly at ease and able to enjoy themselves properly without fear of judgement or limitation. His description of Strange Brew as a place where ‘everyone is welcome as long as they're not a c*nt’ might be a little bit blunt, but it captures an ethos that is difficult to reduce to a formal inclusion policy.
Rather than being an exclusively queer space, it is instead this venue’s relentless commitment to artistic freedom that creates the perfect conditions for queer belonging. Queer culture finds expression in this venue through events such as queer line dancing, band nights, exhibitions and workshops - amongst everything else. Queer expression is interwoven into the fabric of Strange Brew rather than pointed at.
One notable example of Strange Brew’s artistic foundation is its recently held ‘Alpha’ exhibition by the Girls Camera Club. 'Alpha' explored questions of identity, womanhood and sexuality through the analogue photography of eight female and non-binary artists, asking what makes us women and where we fit into the world - and the artwork doesn’t always disappear when the exhibition ends. Pieces left behind by artists have slowly earned a permanent place within Strange Brew’s unique interior, gradually accumulating into a kind of living archive of the creative communities that have shaped it.
Strange brew is also beginning to find its footing in Bristol’s student night life, through initiatives such as Juno live, which hosted a sold out event at the venue on Monday 13th October, with the aim of bringing live music back into student nightlife by connecting young audiences with grassroots venues. Juno Live has already taken its events to Manchester and Edinburgh, working alongside students at each.
These grassroots spaces and events should not be taken for granted, with Thirty grassroot venues permanently closing across the UK in 2025 and more than half turning zero profit. Behind these figures is the disappearance of a space where artists grow, communities form, creativity thrives and people find freedom. From Strange Brew, to The Croft, The Exchange, Mr Wolf’s and the Fleece, these venues are part of Bristol’s cultural fabric.
The Music Venue Trust (MVT), which is dedicated to protecting these venues, has saved Strange Brew once before. Its work highlights what is at stake when these spaces are lost, and how protecting these spaces means preserving more than music. For queer artists and audiences especially, protecting these venues means protecting somewhere where people can exist without explanation, create without compromise and belong without permission.
Featured Image: Epigram / Jesse Frizzell
What's your favourite Strange Brew event?
