VAULT Creative Arts has officially opened the Lower Marsh Arts Club, a newly refurbished permanent venue in London that will support early-career artists through a new £8,000 guarantee scheme and a free-to-participate arts festival.
Formerly known as The Glitch, the Lower Marsh Arts Club, or LowMAC, opened on 8 September 2026. The venue marks the latest stage in VAULT Creative Arts’ transition from the former VAULT Festival towards a year-round programme of work.
A key part of the new venue’s programme will be an £8,000 guarantee model, set to launch as a pilot in Autumn 2027. Four early-career artists or companies will each receive an £8,000 guarantee to create a show and perform a four-week run at LowMAC.
The scheme is designed to provide greater financial stability for artists and give them more time and space to develop new work without taking on the full financial risk themselves.
Before that, LowMAC will launch the Lower Marsh Arts Festival in Spring 2027. The festival will be free for participating artists, with no venue fee, while companies will retain 100% of their ticket income.
The festival will initially take place at LowMAC, with plans to expand to three additional locations within 250 metres of the venue during its first three years.
Artistic Director Oli Savage said the organisation wanted to address the financial pressure currently placed on artists and create a model in which venues take on more of that risk.
He said the two programmes are intended to create more sustainable opportunities for early-career artists and encourage other London venues to consider how risk is distributed within their programming models.
The new venue also continues the legacy of VAULT Festival, which closed in 2024, while establishing a new permanent base for VAULT Creative Arts and its work with emerging artists.