It’s Saturday night – or rather dawn of Sunday morning – in Queen’s Yard. Fabulous queer creatures are on the prowl, spilling out of the Colour Factory doors. They’re party-weathered, but with plenty more razzledazzle in ‘em, yet.

A decade or so back, when the venue was known as Mick’s Garage, they’d be clattering out into a post-industrial backwater, perhaps lured to linger by the thump of a bassline from a nearby live/work warehouse, where the party might push on gleefully through to the afternoon.

Today, clubbers are met with looming empty towers of nearly-finished new build flats, which have transformed the landscape in a matter of months. Some day very soon, thousands of additional residents will be at home right here, and you’d presume not all of them will be feeling quite so full of beans at such a ungodly hour.

Typically, this kind of cool-arty-area-turns-residential vignette would signal a ticking timebomb for a popular late night club venue and the existential threat of noise complaints. Yet there’s a cautious optimism that things can turn out differently in the Wick, and that if we can pioneer it here, a blueprint for better 24-hour neighbourhoods might emerge.

Colour Factory boss, Nathaniel Williams, was one of the ‘noise leads’ on the London Nightlife Taskforce, a body set up in the wake of the post-Covid closure crisis in clubland, with the remit of protecting and growing the capital’s afterhours culture.

Set up by the Mayor’s office, the GLA, it was the biggest signal yet that politicians are taking afterhours culture and commerce seriously, and produced a series of recommendations at the beginning of this year. But how can a set of lofty ideals begin to bridge deep social divisions over who gets the right to silence, and who can make a bit of noise?

The GLA’s Sam Mathys, (the other noise lead on the Taskforce, and now a freshly minted local Green councillor, too), has a history of successful intervention and resolution of such complaints in Hackney.

She believes improving the use of data is key. “Our report recommends a series of noise pilots are tested in nightlife hubs just like Hackney Wick,” she says. “These would see a mediation group set up with local residents, businesses and Councils, plus the adoption of noise monitoring and data capture technologies. We reduced complaints by 60% in Hackney just by making quick interventions, but if you can back up those systems with actual figures, you can get a much better idea of what’s really going on.”

It should mean there’s less chance that a successful venue is threatened with closure by a persistent campaigner with a grudge, a horror story seen all too often elsewhere. The implication is that nightlife venues are responsible for masses of noise pollution issues, when in fact, as Mathys points out, “80% of complaints are actually for residential properties, not commercial. There’s a lot of subjective data and assumptions out there at the moment, but if we had better data at hand, I think it might paint a different picture.”

The will to do things differently here is also apparent in the hiring of licencing expert Liam O’Hare by the incoming Wickside development. He boasts impeccable nightlife chops, having run seminal West End venue The End; and he knows a thing or two about working with residents, too, helping negotiate a record 25 licences for Camden Market after building strong links with local resident groups.

“With Wickside, we’re essentially creating a town centre for Hackney Wick,” he states, “but to do that without regard to a nighttime offering, simply isn’t going to work. Nobody wants to end up with a JG Ballard-esque dystopian wasteland after 6pm, so the goal is to ensure we develop a balanced night time offering, and key to it all, is safety.”

A well lit, bustling street in the early hours is proven to be a whole lot safer than a deserted pin-drop quiet one, so Liam is charged with striking a balance between the wants and needs of everyone involved, to ensure there’s vibrancy, not chaos, after dark.

Their application to Tower Hamlets is to licence 13 late-opening hospitality offerings directly beneath the new flats. These won’t be nightclubs, but the process is another Petri dish for the process of mediating perceived nuisance versus the benefits of a thriving night time economy.

Emma-Jane Nutbrown launched her Queer Edge events at Fish Island bar Two More Years, but the popularity of the parties meant they had to move on. “It wasn’t sustainable for us to stay there, sadly, even though I’m sure they’d love to have us back,” EJ tells us. “The area has become so residential now, so they have restrictions on sound levels. But every other venue we’ve gone to run parties has the same kind of issues.”

She’s since developed cabaret and social dining events alongside the DJ-led nights, demonstrating not only that nightlife has many faces, but there’s a whole variety of valuable reasons and ways for people to gather, spend time together and produce culture at night.

Despite the successes, it’s not been easy, and the big QE parties have recently been scaled back. “What we’re seeing in queer nightlife is the same struggle you see across the industry in general,” she says, “but it feels like it’s heightened, because we are so grassroots. With the cost-of-living crisis and people’s mental health not being in a great place, it’s impacting people’s ability to go out.”

The perfect storm of skyrocketing running costs, high taxes, strict regulations and changing social habits are known to be behind the closure of venues and events all over the country. Which is why now, more than ever, these vital engines of culture need support and understanding from their neighbours, (particularly if what drew them to the area was its vibrant, artistic edge).

Securing a 10-year lease and a 6am licence encouraged Bruno Cabral to invest £100k into improving and soundproofing his multi-room venue, Number 90. “We do everything we can to make everyone happy,” he says, “but it’s tough to risk getting blamed for noise out in the street, which comes from everywhere in a lively area like this. Something brilliant happened not long in Berlin, where a sign went up on a club: ‘Dear future neighbours, please keep in mind that this area has been dedicated to culture, arts and music for many years. The sound belongs here and is appreciated by thousands of people. Please take this into account before you buy or rent here’.”

Over the coming weeks, we’re going to be running regular interview features, opinion pieces and progress reports here in The Wick (and also in the print magazine, too) as the area’s nightlife seeks to coexist with an influx of new residents.

The Wick’s Nightlife Campaign has a simple aim - to highlight the cultural value of all that happens after dark, and look towards solutions so that it can thrive as the area changes. We’ve seen efforts to protect the artist community here in the wake of ongoing post-Olympics regeneration, and to avoid the usual story of displacement that has been seen in similarly artistic urban clusters across the world.

Which makes Hackney Wick & Fish Island the ideal place to extend the same principles to the nighttime economy, which has been such an equally vital part of the local ecosystem for so long.

Noise - and noise complaints - are part of urban living. But there’s an opportunity here to challenge the orthodoxies that make them an existential threat to licenced venues, and that’s the dialogue we’re determined to have here, via our platform as your dedicated local media outlet and unwavering culture champions.

Next week: We’ll be chatting with Save Our Scene, the organisation making an outsized impact campaigning for grassroots venues across the UK, all from their base right here in the Wick.

📖 This article first appeared in the Spring 2026 edition of The Wick magazine (issue 20). Grab a free copy locally now, while they’re still available…