London Pleasure Gardens

Newly opened to much applause until everyone was sent away from BLOC festival because of overcrowding. What a shame, what a shame. i expect that once it’s sorted it will be fine enough though and it’ a nice place to hang out.

2012 Review #200: (warning: Long)
When I first arrived here, I thought this would be a 5 star review. Sadly, that is not the case. When my husband and I saw that Bloc (an electronic music festival 5 years running) was moving to London with a line-​up that looked positively unbelievable, we decided this was the year. We bought tickets, we booked hotels, and we went. In my mind the whole time was a small thought, simply, «I hope the venue will be ready in time.» Unfortunately, this brand new venue was not, and it caused an insurmountable amount of problems.
The original Pleasure Gardens existed in the 19^th century, with lush gardens and as a general venue for leisure and entertainment. In the last couple of years, a group of people received some money, and when that was not enough, a loan for £3 million from the Newham Council, which essentially means from the taxpayers in this area.
The LPG was slated to open in late June. It did, to a free event that the nearby people were encouraged to attend. Our festival was to be held one week later. You can read reviews of the facility here:
Obviously, there were clear and numerable issues. Even before our festival, the grounds weren’t done, there weren’t enough facilities, bars and services weren’t done. Somewhere in that thread is a statement from one Garfield Hackett, one of the leaders of the LPG, stating that they will «fix the issues» by the «next event». He wrote this on July 5^th, our event was July 6^th. No surprise, but the event didn’t go well.
We arrived at the festival at 4 pm, it was supposed to open at 2, but did not open until 4, despite the fact that there were artists slated to perform during this time. It took us 30 minutes to get in, past LPG’s extremely (too) thorough drug search, bag search, etc. By 5 pm, the wait to get in had increased to 2 hours (though technically this was not due to LPG). We went to scope out the first show we wanted to see. Employees had no idea where things were– we asked someone if they were guarding the entrance, because it was a huge open gap. He said yes. Turns out it was the exit, and the entrance was a very small doorway around the corner. We asked if we could form a queue and were told «there are no queues». We still formed a queue, and several hundred people did also, behind us. We saw 2 shows this way, and although we were luckily at the start of the lines, the lines to get in to each arena on site were reportedly over an hour long.
One of the biggest issues is that the LPG did not finish the venue as had been planned. They had to cram much of the music arenas onto a small amount of the site, which lead to some of the worst crowding I’ve ever seen. By the time we decided to leave at 10:45, they had put the facility on lockdown, but no employee would tell us that, so we walked around from exit to exit trying to leave. Eventually, we left, but for everyone inside, they brought in innumerable police officers to shut the site down, due to LPG’s horrible planning and layout. Proof of this horrible layout: the police divided the venue site in half, cordoning people off, but because of LPG’s horrible organization, there were no restrooms on one whole half of the site, so the back of one of the arenas basically became an open pit toilet.
After the festival was cancelled that evening, LPG issued an almost comically insensitive statement in which they lied about the site being clear by 2:00am (many reporters were on site well past 3:00), blamed it on Bloc, and then encouraged everyone to come back for future events. They have since removed that statement. Once I got home and started searching around, I found that the Newham Council has licenced LPG to hold 30,000 people. Our event was scheduled for 15,000, and the ticket providers claim no more than 8,000 attended. Even that was too much for this site. Further, the Metropolitan Police issued a statement that the event was closed due to «rain» which is puzzling because it didn’t rain at all that day. All of this just reeks of cover-​up to me. This site was extremely poorly planned (one reviewer on the link above states that they didn’t begin construction until 8 weeks ago). Probably the most troubling detail was this link that shows there is a substantial risk of asbestos contamination on site:
I know this was incredibly long but the point is that due to the upcoming olympics, a need to reimburse lenders and an obvious amount of ineptitude and greed, what could have been an amazing experience and tribute to the past use of this space has instead become probably the worst planned event space I will ever visit. It will be interesting to see how Olympic events held here pan out, and if they too end in police intervention.

This is a spectacular idea! A haven in the Docklands of disused land, out of the way of too many neighbors, with lots of space for creative exploration and music. A great idea in principal, but which falls short. With the cancellation of the bloc Weekender here (they over subscribed on ticket sales so they had to shut down & cancel the event), you can’t but question how they got this so wrong. The place was overcrowded and the crowd capacity made this event dangerous. However in amongst this disaster you could find a selection of creative artwork and installation that make the gardens stand out. So I’m torn about this venue, the idea of an art soaked waste land getting the chance to party on a disused military boat, and drink cocktails in a floating bar appeals, they need to pull their organization skills together to make this work. I just hope the bloc weekend fiasco doesn’t bankrupt them and we get to see the full potential of this unique venue. Definitely somewhere to watch, even if this is with a sceptical eye.