Beloved Bristol venue Thekla has been nominated for prestigious Music Week Award

Beloved Bristol venue Thekla has been nominated for prestigious Music Week Award

Posted on: 22 Feb 2024

The famous venue on a boat has been nominated for the Grassroots Venue: Spirit Of The Scene title at the Music Week Awards with the winner decided by a public vote.

 

Thekla is one of the treasures of Bristol’s burgeoning nightlife scene and is up against some stiff competition from all over the country, including legendary spots such as The Leadmill in Sheffield and Brixton’s Windmill.

 

Voting only takes a couple of minutes so why not take a moment to vote for Thekla, HERE.

 

 

The good ship Thekla is one of Bristol’s most interesting venues due to its former life as a cargo ship. Built in Germany in 1958, the ship carried a variety of cargoes between Northern and Western Europe, particularly timber from ports in the Baltic Sea.

 

After running aground off the coast of Northern England, Thekla was abandoned in a derelict Sunderland dock. It was eventually bought by husband-and-wife Ki and Vivian Longfellow-Stanshall in 1982, who assembled an inexperienced crew who sailed the ship 632 nautical miles around the East Coast to Bristol’s Floating Harbour.

 

There, under the ownership of Ki and Vivian, it became the Old Profanity Showboat, hosting theatre, cabaret, comedy and live music acts from all over Britain. The original plan was to sail it to New York to continue this work but it wasn’t to be as The Old Profanity closed down in 1986.

 

The Thekla we know and love today was born soon after, hosting blistering punk shows in the 80s and providing a hotspot for homegrown sensations such as Massive Attack, Portishead, and Roni Size in the 90s. Throughout the 90s and early 2000s, Thekla also served as a cornerstone for Bristol’s D&B, hosting such legends as Grooverider in its famous hull.

 

Thekla continues to fulfil this legacy to this day: taken over by DHP Family in 2006, Bristol music fans have since welcomed the likes of Stormzy, Phoebe Bridgers, funk and soul master Craig Charles and house music icon Chris Lorenzo as well as running as hosting long lasting nights Pressure and Pop Confessional.

The Music Week Awards are the UK’s only music awards that recognise labels, publishing, venues, radio, marketing and PR. Vote for Thekla in the Grassroots Venue: Spirit Of The Scene category, HERE.

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Article by:

Stanley Gray

Stan is a born and bred Bristolian, recently graduated from studying English Literature in Sheffield. His passions are music and literature and he spends the majority of his time in venues all over the city, immersing himself in Bristol’s alternative music scene. A lifelong Bristol City fan, Stan’s Saturdays are spent watching his team both home and away.