Societies and Sandy’s Bar: How the Union has Failed to Find Space for Performing Arts Groups
It seems everyone has an opinion on The Red Gown. Some love it for its food, others hate it for its decoration. Regardless, I think it’s safe to assume that it isn't going anywhere. In a statement regarding the future of Main Bar, the Union promised that “(Wetherspoons) supports our ambition to develop this space into a vibrant, relevant hub of student life—one that is welcoming, inclusive and shaped by the needs of our students.”
While the renovation of Main Bar has been the focus, something that tends to be forgotten is the absorption of Sandy’s Bar, one of the Union’s beloved establishments, into just another sideroom. Sandy’s, for many students, will probably be most associated with the weekly Karaoke night.
However, for many performing arts and pop culture societies, Sandy’s closure has meant the loss of a performance space. I sat down with two societies to hear directly about how the loss of space has impacted them, and what it could mean for other societies in the future.
RockSoc, St Andrews’ rock and metal society, is a prominent group at the university and drew a regular crowd at Sandy’s while it was operating. Having used the bar upwards of twenty times in the last year on a bi-weekly basis, the society’s co-presidents, Laur Kelly and Liz Dempster, would consider it their primary performance location. Many of the benefits they list include a set performance area that allowed easy setup for equipment and a location that allowed for natural foot traffic. As Dempster says, “People would hear the music, they would pay at the door, then they would come through — it was basically a much more natural space.”
However, during the summer, the renovations began. The co-presidents tell me they originally found out about Sandy’s closure from friends who work at the Union, and believe that they were never officially or personally told, as a society.
Since the closure, the RockSoc have struggled to find a space they’re able to use longterm, either due to licensing, costs, or its ability to accommodate the volume of people for club nights. As Kelly explains, “There's not really another viable space in St Andrews that would work for our purposes...”
Meanwhile, another issue has cause for concern: Dempster and Kelly both mention how, since other venues may lack the safety procedures for patrons that the Union has, it runs the risk of “unrelated, unaffiliated” people entering into club nights. They explain that since RockSoc is an alternative society made up of many LGBTQIA+ students, this is a worry for the members in regards to their own safety.
Meanwhile, the closure has not only affected the more established societies — newer societies are now left with fewer options. The Improvable Skyrats, one of St Andrews’ newest performing arts groups, has only been affiliated in the last semester. Despite this, the improv group had already used the space for a showcase and had planned to use Sandy’s as its regular location. In fact, Skyrats Vice President, E Brown, describes the bar as a "pivotal" space where they would have likely had more performances in the future.
The closure, they tell me, has left them without a sustainable replacement. "It's taken away our easy, go-to primary performance space,” explains President Jack Dams. “Now, every time we do a showcase, we will have to have a discussion as to where we want it to be. It won't just be a simple case of ‘we do it at the same place we always do it’”.
Similarly to RocSoc, as Skyrats Secretary, Sam Morrison, recalls, the Skyrats received no communication from the Union about the closure at the time, and found out about it from the general newsletter and “word of mouth”, to the point that they had tried to book Sandy’s for a showcase, only to discover the shutdown (they clarify that they have since officially received communication from the Union).
Previously, Sandy’s Bar allowed for a capacity of 100. Now, due to sudden changes in venue plans, both societies have found their audience sizes impacted. Skyrats had also relied on Sandy’s for its low-key atmosphere and useful location for walk-ins. Now their venue options are either too expensive for the long term or have too high an audience capacity – Sandy’s, Morrison tells me, due to its medium size, allowed for a good feel of the audience for the performers. After the closure, some of their new options, like the Barron, as Dams describes, “feels a lot emptier with the same number of people, in terms of atmosphere.”
Meanwhile, RockSoc suffers a different issue. With several popular club nights typically on their calendar, the loss of their primary venue at Sandy’s has meant RockSoc has actually been unable to hold their first club night of the semester. Since many new members only pay after events begin, this delay, caused by the loss of Sandy’s, has directly impacted their new membership intake for this year.
Like I said earlier, The Red Gown is here to stay, but for many of these performing and pop culture societies, this means ‘Sandy’s is never coming back’. The RockSoc co-presidents tell me that the closure has removed the sense of familiarity they've developed within the university, as “people would just know that RockSoc was going to happen on a Thursday at Sandy’s…” They even tell me they’ve received messages from students asking where the next performance is going to be held, and now they can't guarantee where.
It could be said that Sandy provided these societies, and many others, with a space to be a part of the St Andrews ecosystem. Since the renovation and with few alternatives, many fear this performing arts niche may shrink. Let’s just hope they find a new venue and continue to grow.
The Union has not responded to requests for comments.
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