I first met Amy Lamé simply over eight years in the past on a constructing web site behind Denmark Avenue. She was sporting a tough hat and a hi-vis jacket, which I believe weren’t her ordinary equipment. Additionally, it was morning, inflicting me to marvel if Night time Czars had been alleged to be awake at the moment of day. Nonetheless, if Lamé was discovering her circumstances unfamiliar, she rose to the problem with aplomb.
As building staff crashed and banged, she made a spirited case for why the gutting of a historic quarter of London’s standard music tradition was not an act of profiteering vandalism however a bit of inventive work in progress. “That is extremely thrilling,” she instructed a showbiz digital camera crew. “London’s altering and having a Night time Czar is a part of that.”
Sadiq Khan, elected Mayor for the primary time solely seven months earlier, was nonetheless on his political honeymoon and had solely simply added Lamé to his group. Hers was a novel appointment: for one factor, though equal roles existed in different cities, London had by no means earlier than had a senior regional authorities determine masking all points of the capital’s financial and social life between the hours of 6pm and 6am (versus the opposite approach spherical); for one more, Lamé’s employment historical past was primarily in leisure, not the usually technical and prosaic world of public coverage.
True, she had acquired a powerful understanding of points of planning from her profitable marketing campaign to avoid wasting the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, a long-established homosexual venue, from closure. What, although, did her new job contain? And the way properly did she find yourself doing it?
For a while earlier than she stood down from it in October, such questions had been being loudly requested by Conservative opponents of Mayor Khan with pejorative rhetorical intent. Within the run-up to Could’s mayoral election, long-running Tory and rightwing media claims that Lamé was amassing a fats wage for doing little helpful work as London’s night time time industries struggled grew to become a centrepiece of Tory candidate Susan Corridor’s assault repertoire.
That was incongruous, inconsistent and unfair: incongruous, as a result of Corridor’s purse-lipped suburban persona made her an unlikely champion of nocturnal hedonism; inconsistent, as a result of Tories are sometimes the primary to demand tighter controls over leisure venues if their voters’ sleep is being disturbed (Westminster Labour’s historic borough win in 2022 owed a lot to their profitable stealing of these Conservative garments); unfair, as a result of it declined to recognise both the character of Lamé’s tasks or the trouble she put into discharging them.
Her function mixed championing, convening and lobbying, together with inside Metropolis Corridor itself, with the aim of, within the GLA web site’s phrases, “placing the Mayor’s Imaginative and prescient for London as a 24-hour metropolis into motion”. This coated all the pieces from licensing to avenue security (notably for girls) to nighttime time staff’ pay and situations to making sure that the wants of the night time time economic system, in its many varieties, had been recognised in planning coverage.
The latter took a particular kind with the “agent of change” ideas embedded in Khan’s new London Plan, the grasp blueprint for the capital’s evolution, which positioned obligations on property builders to make sure that new initiatives, usually housing schemes, didn’t find yourself posing a risk to the operations of adjoining cultural venues.
This was often about residents being sad about noise from, say, a subsequent door cinema – as within the case of the Curzon in Mayfair – coming by means of their partitions. “Agent of change” insurance policies make builders accountable for present sufficient soundproofing, in order that the issue doesn’t come up. Additionally and equally, they place obligations on new, noise-generating venues to soundproof themselves.
Of itself, this wasn’t new: Boris Johnson recognised the precept and, shortly earlier than his mayoralty got here to an finish, mentioned its was established in his London Plan. However Khan promised to strengthen the measures, with Lamé, knowledgeable by her Royal Vauxhall Tavern marketing campaign, backing them strongly. They ultimately took the type of London Plan coverage D13 (which additionally covers different noise-generating and potential “nuisance” points).
Lamé additionally devised an evening time enterprise zone programme, awarding grants of £130,000 to be spent in particular areas to assist native hospitality and tradition sectors, starting with Walthamstow Excessive Avenue in 2019 and increasing in 2022 to Bromley, Vauxhall and Woolwich. The intervening interval was, after all, that of the pandemic, with its devastating results on eating places, pubs, golf equipment, theatres, cinemas and reside music venues.
There was a really actual sense through which Covid obliged Lamé and her Metropolis Corridor group to begin their work afresh. An acceleration of the working from residence pattern, with its notably large Friday night time results, had shifted the night time time panorama. Restoration has occurred, however not and not using a battle. It was handy for some to pin blame for this on Lamé, as if her Metropolis Corridor place got here with extraordinary powers to avoid wasting struggling companies for closure.
Much less was heard about these she helped to succeed by means of persuasion and advocacy at Metropolis Corridor and borough degree alike. The chair of a north London theatre that lately moved to a brand new, purpose-built residence described her and her help as “great”. Khan’s planning deputy, Jules Pipe, describes himself as “an actual fan” of Amy” and her as “a genuinely pretty particular person”.
There is no such thing as a doubt in his thoughts that “she was actually keen about the way forward for the inventive industries and specifically preventing for the survival of venues beneath risk”. Though she has now left Metropolis Corridor, Pipe says he nonetheless regards her as, so to talk, a part of the household, “persevering with to advertise London as the worldwide capital it’s for cultural and inventive industries”.
Simply as Amy Lamé can’t be held accountable for London nightlife companies failing, neither can she be awarded undue credit score for these new ones which have began and prospered. However it’s price reflecting on what has modified on and round Denmark Avenue since that December day in 2016 – not solely extra guitar retailers than earlier than and the draw of the Outernet, however new, state-of-the-art reside music venues too. That success has had many authors, however the Night time Czar performed her half.
Picture of Amy Lamé from GLA web site.
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