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Venue development studio

Your room can only ever be as busy as the reasons people have to come to it.

MAYA, the launch film

Most venues in London are running at the limit of the one reason they already give people, which is usually dinner. The room fills for two hours, empties, and the rest of the night belongs to somebody else.

We build the second reason. The brand, the music, the programme and the crowd that fill the hours your room is currently giving away, and then we hand the whole thing over to you and leave.

What we do

We work with owners who have a room that is nearly there. The location works, the food is good, and the space holds more people than it ever seems to have in it. What’s missing is a reason for anyone to feel like the place belongs to them.

We create destinations through culture.

Music is what we love, so it’s often the way in. It can as easily be food, art, fashion, or what’s in the glass.

MAYA

Marylebone. Twelve months.

MAYA was the room beneath a restaurant on Wigmore Street. Thirty seated covers in a space that holds eighty standing, doing dinner and not much else, half full most nights and closing when the last table finished. The agave list was already one of the best in London and the room was still empty, because nobody had been given a reason to be in it.

Hands finishing the shell of a hand built speaker cabinet.
The sound system being built
The MAYA room full, standing, the bar lit at the back.
MAYA, the room full

The room did not get bigger. It got a second reason.

Three nights a week the room filled every seat by eight and stayed standing until close. Dinner did not suffer for it.

Read the full case study

Before this

We each ran our own events company, Panther and Alfaia, and between us we’ve put on around fifty productions. Both were built on unusual rooms and the production to match, which is why the partnership made sense.

The listed church at capacity, the room lit and full.
The church

We take a venue for twelve months and we work for the owner.

Months one to six

The build

Months seven to twelve

Oversight

Month twelve

Then we leave

At the end of twelve months you own the brand, the name, the identity, the audience and the relationships. All of it. We go.

The bar and low tables, seen across the room.
The bar

Brand partners

£75,000

Committed over two years to MAYA by a major premium tequila brand, on the strength of the concept alone.

Sponsors don’t buy an audience, they buy a concept they can be seen next to, which means the money can come in before the doors open. It paid for the sound system and a large part of what we cost.

Four a year.

We take on four venues a year, which is as many as we can do properly given how much of the first six months is us in the room.

If yours might be one of them, apply below and we’ll come and see the room. No pitch, no cost, just a conversation about what the space could be.

Rooms of thirty to a hundred and fifty. Independents and small groups. London.