A music college is looking to take on a second music venue in central Brighton.
WaterBear College of Music has submitted a change of use application to Brighton and Hove City Council.
It wants to add educational use to permissions already allowed at the former Latest Music Bar site in Manchester Street.
The application, submitted on Wednesday 27 November, is for change of use from club, music venue, café, recording studio and offices to club, music venue, educational and rehearsal space.
WaterBear co-founders Adam Bushell and Bruce John Dickinson are waiting to secure the change of use before taking up the lease of the venue which currently operates as Manchester Street Arts Club.
The college, which offers undergraduate and postgraduate music degrees, already operates the WaterBear venue at the former Funky Buddha site in King’s Road Arches.
Students perform in a professional setting there and WaterBear wants to be able to offer the same sort of opportunities at the Manchester Street site.
Mr Bushell, the chief executive, is a session drummer who has worked with Freak Power, Will Young and Jason Derulo.
He said that he wanted to continue the success of the seafront WaterBear venue at the Manchester Street site.
Mr Bushell, 53, said: “We’ll keep it as a venue so our students can put on nights and promoters can put on nights. We can get it on our map through our marketing and promotions
“We’re going to have a more MTV Unplugged area upstairs like it always has been and we keep that venue downstairs for gigs.”
Mr Dickinson, 56, a director of the college and a former guitarist with the successful 1990s hard rock band Little Angels, said that live performance in a commercial environment helped students develop as musicians.
He said: “You make different records, different music in the studio if you’ve come from a back of a load of gigs.
“We’ve got to keep that training ground. Famously the Beatles would not have been the Beatles if it wasn’t for all those thousands of hours playing night after night in Hamburg.
“You have to create the environment for people to become artists. Craft is different to art. Art is magic.”
No physical changes are proposed for the venue. A report by Goodhand Acoustics has been submitted as part of the application.
The Latest Music Bar’s lease ended in February and the business now operates out of Horatio’s Bar on the Palace Pier.
To view the planning application and comment, visit the planning portal on the council’s planning website and search for BH2024/02909.
