Opening in March 2024, Corn Exchange on Newport’s High Street will be a 500-capacity live music and performance venue, giving bands and performers a large capacity venue in the city – and providing South East Wales with a mid-size venue. As a gathering space for people of the city since it was first opened in 1878. In more recent times this cornerstone of Newport’s history has served the city as a nightclub and an office space. From early 2024 it will once again be a hub for gatherings in the city, bringing a heritage venue back to purpose in Newport’s city centre, while at the same time adding another story to the city’s rich cultural history. The venue will attract bands, comedians and other artists who have outgrown Le Pub but aren’t ready to sell the capacity of venues such as the Motorpoint Arena in Cardiff or the O2 in Bristol. It will bring bands and performers back into the city centre, attracting audiences from the greater Gwent and Bristol area – audiences and visitors we would have otherwise lost to Bristol or further afield. Excellently positioned in the city centre, surrounded by well-established places to eat and drink, as well as accommodation and excellent transport links in and out of the city, its previous life as a nightclub lends this space perfectly to a new life as a live music venue - a place for the community, and a place for our city, and a new place for visitors and tourists to experience in Newport. The space would also be made commercially available for use for celebrations, corporate events, conferences, and other such large-scale gatherings, offering a new and unique space in the city centre for events of this nature. Over two floors, it also offers space for other amenities and projects, which would feed into a core ethos of promoting and nurturing local culture and talent; keeping Newport’s music scene threaded through the next generations and raising aspirations for young people from all communities right across the city. It is incumbent on us as a cultural community to continue to nurture music in the city in the name of our cultural heritage, as well as to support future generations of musicians and artists.
