Spaces & Stories launched in June 2022 with a portfolio of some of the UK’s top venues and locations. We discuss how it all started, and what drives us to make an impact.
Spaces & Stories began with the belief that finding the right space can change a story. With more than thirty years’ experience in events, from production to venue management, the team identified something they could offer: a single solution for finding, transforming and activating venues and locations.
The potential of Spaces & Stories lies in its expert team, which has been brought together from two of the events industry’s leading institutions. It builds on the services and portfolio of Venue Lab, which was acquired by Broadwick Group in 2021, and their expertise in the management, programming and production of some of the UK’s most high-profile cultural venues, such as Printworks London and Manchester’s Depot Mayfield.
The brand is led by Jemma Scott, Head of Spaces & Stories, working alongside Group MD Bradley Thompson, CEO Simon Tracey, and Director of Strategy Simeon Aldred. They lead experienced venue and event specialists within the Spaces and Stories team, as well as award-winning event producers, creatives and promoters from across the Broadwick Group.
“We are delighted to add Spaces & Stories to the Broadwick Group family. We are better placed than ever to turn innovative spaces and ideas into reality for our partners, maximising the value we provide to developers, landowners and operators.”
From mastering the potential of meanwhile spaces to building hybrid venues from the ground up, Spaces & Stories is more than a listing service or venue management operation. It invests long-term in its locations to make them safe and sustainable cultural destinations, contributing to placemaking and community building around the country. Shaped by its key values of form function and flexibility, it exemplifies how architecture and intelligent design can deliver emotional impact today while making a meaningful investment in the future.
Spaces & Stories works across four key areas: expert venue management, with a portfolio of unique properties across the UK; building and transforming flexible spaces; finding locations for bespoke briefs and projects; and inspiring the most memorable live experiences.
“We are focused on evolving the world of venue, entertainment and filming spaces, through a more fluid and flexible approach, so our spaces can feature a wide spectrum of content and tell powerful stories”
The S&S portfolio covers half a million square metres of hybrid venue space, characterised by outstanding quality, function and flexibility. It combines historic interiors – such as the opulent eighteenth-century interiors of the Mayfair townhouse Thirty Eight Grosvenor Square and the red-brick Victorian Pumping House – with the cutting-edge skyscraper design of venues such as Landing Forty Two and authentic warehouses big enough to get lost in.
Development is key to the Spaces & Strories strategy, from the transformation of Printworks – from Europe’s biggest printing factory to a cultural destination, described by Mixmag as ‘one of the most striking venues in the capital city, if not the country’ – to our first new build, Magazine London, an events venue built by events experts.
Over the last decade, the market for flexible, multi-use spaces has multiplied with the growth of pop-ups, food markets, hybrid office and coworking environments, Instagram-ready brand experiences and immersive exhibitions and concerts. Spaces & Stories is a market leader in building and activating exceptional spaces with flexibility as a key requirement. A venue might host a wedding one day, and become a Hollywood film set the next.
“Our spaces are continuously reconfigured and transformed to create new and exciting spatial environments that are then filled with a variety of incredible content. Complete set builds, fashion shows, music events and brand activations represent just a few examples of activity taking place across our portfolio”
The Stories section of the website provides an opportunity to showcase the spaces in use, and shed light on the people who create them. The value of any new business is in its partnerships, and these Stories provide a way of celebrating collaborative projects, and the creative ways people choose to activate spaces. Most of all, these stories are intended to inspire and connect, translating the power of live experience into the digital realm.
