Motion Iconic club a victim of city's success

As world-famous nightclub Motion closes its doors this weekend Tristan Cork asks why more why more isn’t done to protect our cultural highlights...

- Tristan Cork

T is one of the most famous and reputed clubs in the world - listed alongside venues from Los Angeles to Thailand and Ibiza to Berlin as one of the best on Earth.

But while those others are cherished by their cities as important cultural assets, Motion Nightclub in Bristol is closing this weekend.

There is a fundraiser for the club’s owners to find another site somewhere, but to do so they will face a double challenge - Bristol’s rapidly changing and inflating property market and almost certainly the objections of whoever lives near the location they do find to reopen.

So, essentially, the most famous thing about Bristol for anyone under the age of 30 or maybe even 40, is closing. Blue Mountain on Stokes Croft was quietly demolished in Covid times, and the last one of the great Bristol nightclub trilogy - Lakota - is still going but living on borrowed time, with plans already approved to replace it with new homes in the not-too-distant future.

Many reading this won't be mourning too much, I’m sure. But please do take a step back and appreciate exactly what is happening here, and the gravity of this weekend's events at the end of the Feeder Canal.

Mention Bristol to people around the country of a certain generation, they might think of Brunel or Johnny Morris talking to the elephants at Bristol Zoo. Other generations might reply with Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead. Younger still and they might talk about the cult TV series Skins. For anyone of that generation or younger, Motion might well get a mention.