Prison Brave: An exciting new UK event space

Set in the heart of Gloucester, the former HMPS institute is now a popular tourist attraction after its closure back in 2013 and is remembered as one of the top overcrowded prisons of its time. Its imposing structure, and layout, with all its original fittings, still sends an eerie feel through the souls of today’s visitors.

You can imagine our surprise when scanning the social news feeds for our daily ‘dog playing football with a tortoise’ videos, when we stumble across an exciting project, a series of raves, to be located at this once a place of mass execution! We had to find out what the plans are with this ambitious proposal.

We spoke to Andy Davies (Greene Palm Ltd) and Richie Carrera (The Garden Project), the guys behind this wacky but potentially game-changing proposition, to see just how this all came about. 

Q: How has this project come to life? 

AD – The ‘Prison Series’ project started by chance. Knowing the area well, I got speaking to someone who works at the prison, went to view it and came to an agreement almost instantly for using it as an events space. I opened dialogue with Richie, and it made sense for us to work together to produce some of the most top-class events the UK has ever seen and make use of the exclusive contract we have with the venue. 

RC – As Andy said, it has been a great few weeks of making dreams happen.

Q: What made you use prison as a location? Is it a one-off event? 

AD – After the initial viewing at the prison, it was a no brainer to convert such a unique space into a large capacity venue. Its originality makes it a first in the UK as a location for this sort of event. The vision is to provide a wow-factor experience to the masses on all key calendar dates. 

RC – It’s a prison! We have huge plans lined up for the space and are looking to increase the license to a 5000 capacity and use the whole site in a festival-style series of events, not just the four areas we are using this year. 

Q: What is the main aim of the project? 

AD – To provide the clubbing world with a never-seen-before event space and world-class line ups to match.

RC – To build on what is already the venue that everybody wants to play and be part of. (Nobody has even seen it yet) This is a unique event space in clubland right now, and we hope to build on that. As promoters, venues like this are a dream, and we will do everything we can to give this venue the events and respect it deserves. 

The unveiling of this unique ‘Prison Series’ experience is set to take place at some point in July (lineup dependant), with plans afoot for shows in September, a Halloween weekender and, of course, NYE and NYD. 

We think this is a wonderful piece of news and just what the UK needs right now, a breath of fresh air and will look on with great anticipation as this develops. The past year and a half have been tough for our industry, and this sort of enterprise gives us huge amounts of hope for the post-Covid dance world.