Supersonic update – important news!
Once again, we’ve been pushed out by developers in Digbeth. The space we’ve used for years that has housed our beloved marketplace and food court, the beating heart of Supersonic, is no longer available to us, pulled out from under us just weeks before the festival. This isn’t an isolated incident, sadly it’s part of a long and painful pattern. Over the years, we’ve slowly been losing vital spaces that once made Supersonic possible. We were pushed out of the Custard Factory after more than a decade of calling it home. Then, last year, we lost the warehouse space for our main stage to yet another developer and relocated to the O2 Institute.
While we continue to make the best of that situation, it comes at a serious cost as we lose the ability to run our own bars, a crucial source of income, and have had to absorb significant hire fees working with other venues. These financial hits don’t just make things harder; they put the very future of Supersonic at risk.
Make no mistake: what’s happening in Digbeth is a slow erasure of independent culture. Supersonic was born here in 2003, when Digbeth was a raw and wild frontier for creativity. We built installations under viaducts and hosted stages in warehouses. Now, those spaces are being replaced with soulless, profit-driven developments that leave no room for culture to breathe.
But we are not giving up.
Thanks to the grit and determination of our team, we’ve secured a new home for this year’s festival hub at the brilliant Zellig Building. Perfectly located between our two main venues XOYO and the O2 Institute, this space on Saturday and Sunday will house the food court, a Supersonic bar and tea room, seating, talks, workshops, guest DJs, and our fantastic market of independent stallholders, plus band and festival merch.
We also have bars at XOYO main live space, who are working with us as a genuine partner. Both Zellig and XOYO are helping us reclaim some of the income we’ve lost elsewhere. That bar income is absolutely crucial to making Supersonic viable.
So we’re asking, no, urging you to support us by using the bars at Zellig and XOYO throughout the weekend – every drink you buy helps us stay viable.
Please pick up something special from our incredible stallholders, and support our delicious food traders. Every purchase you make is a show of solidarity, not just with Supersonic, but with the wider independent community that makes this festival what it is.
Supersonic has always been more than a festival. It’s a community. And right now, we need that community more than ever.
If you believe in independent music, in bold ideas, in the spaces where real culture happens, not curated by developers, but created by people, stand with us.
With love from Supersonic x
