A fond farewell to The Foundry

Some years ago, I was one of a group of people who, as we worked next door and it was the nearest bar, used regularly to drop into – and fall out of – The Foundry, an alternative arts space near Old Street.
Last night Hackney council approved plans for The Foundry to be pulled down, and in its place, the site’s owners plan to build an 18-storey hotel.
The Foundry is a ramshackle dive of a place, with furniture that looks as if it came out of skips and a floor that sticks to feet. Every surface is covered in art: some good; much falling into either the graffiti or found object categories; some of it apparently constructed by trolls on strong hallucinogenics. It’s a hybrid space, somewhere between bar, art gallery and performance area – many of its clientele are art exhibits all by themselves, although The Foundry hosts all sorts of events. For all that it’s lacking in detergent, it is to be treasured: an authentic, eccentrically boho gin palace that celebrates all sorts of creativity and gives a platform to new and emerging artists. It is a place for oddballs and misfits: our lot felt right at home.
Places like The Foundry are more than just watering holes: they are breeding grounds for work by people whose conversations spark new developments and directions. Hot Chip formed in there, Pete Doherty read poetry and artists including Banksy and Gavin Turk have propped up its bar and scrawled on its walls. It looks like a mucky hole and maybe because of that, there’s more teeming life in it than in a thousand clean, efficient, modular, sanitised, corporate spaces.
I am glad of the time I lost in The Foundry – it was all too easy to loose time in there. I haven’t been for years, but its demolition will be a great loss, and a small tragedy. Hoxton lost its guts a long time ago, and a bit more of its soul will go when The Foundry does.