We've been open a year!

Highlights from our opening year

From a packed-out Beacon Hall for Annie Mac in December 2023 right through to the sold-out Ezra Collective double-nighter in October 2024, we’ve shared countless memories with you over the last 12 months.

A year in numbers

It’s been a record breaking year! Over 380,000 of your have visited Bristol Beacon to see a concert, take part in a singing workshop, or attend a graduation or festival in the past 12 months. That’s a 25% increase since we were last open in 2018 making us one of the busiest venues in the South West.

We’ve presented over 726 events with over 500 artists performing across our four transformed performance spaces: Beacon Hall, Lantern Hall and Weston Stage (our venue in The Cellars) and Bridgehouse Stage (our foyer).

Some headliner highlights included Ezra Collective, Beabadoobee, Paul Weller, London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle, Paloma Faith, Lankum, Beverley Knight and Fisherman’s Friends.

Over 6,000 audience members experienced BBC Proms in Bristol for the first time – these concerts were also broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 during the residency.

As well as the gigs, we launched our brand new Bristol-based Resident Artists programme which gives 3 emerging artists funding and support to develop their musical practice. This year’s artists are Grove, Holysseus Fly and Waldo’s Gift.

3,676 young people have engaged in weekly teaching activity through the Music Hub which is run by Bristol Beacon.

Our venue is a space for everyone hosting conferences, graduations, weddings and loads more alongside our busy events programme. In the past year, over 13,000 UWE graduates and their families celebrated their graduation at Bristol Beacon and we hosted 23 major conferences including the Association of British Orchestras and Association of Independent Festivals. Want to hire our venue? Find out more about venue hire here.

And it turns out Bristol likes a drink or two (in case you didn’t already know) – we served over 140,000 pints in our bars and restaurants

Our most nail-biting moments

Sometimes, things don’t always go to plan… Over the passed year we presented over 700 events, so a few things were bound to go pear shaped!

We asked the Beacon team what their most nail-biting moments from the passed year have been, what happened when things wrong, and how they saved the day and let the show go on.

“My most nail-biting experience so far was when I repped a show in Lantern Hall and the touring sound engineer had lost all of the settings from the sound check earlier that day, so the band were performing and they were mixing on the fly!”

Olive Noonan, Event Coordinator

“So I was running a workshop with a group of young girls and we played hide and seek in a break time, and we could not find them anywhere in the building.

After 20 minutes I went into Beacon Hall and they were sat in the audience watching Paul Weller’s sound check for his show that evening!”

Connie Badley, Community Engagement Officer

“It was the second day of the BBC Proms, we were going live on Radio 3 and suddenly the music venue across the road started blasting music at the summer party. There was a really loud DJ going on and we had a few frantic moments when we tried to work out if it was being broadcast on national radio!”

Lauren Davies, Event Coordinator

But for all the things that didn’t quite go to plan…there was a lot that went right.