A new partnership between St Paul’s Cathedral and the nightclub fabric brings contemporary music into one of London’s most recognisable sacred spaces. Beyond the predictable arguments about whether the two belong together is a wider question about how faith buildings remain part of everyday London for people who may never attend a service.
On 29 October, The Cinematic Orchestra will perform beneath the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. It will be a seated, minimally amplified concert, the first in a new four-year partnership that makes Farringdon nightclub fabric the Cathedral’s exclusive contemporary music partner through to 2030.
It is not quite the “rave in the nave” some of the reaction might suggest. St Paul’s and fabric have already worked together on performances by RY X and Patti Smith, and the Cathedral says the programme is intended to introduce new audiences to the building. The first newly announced concert gives us a better idea of what that will mean in practice.
We have written before about London’s faith buildings as civic infrastructure, providing meeting rooms, food banks, community support and somewhere to gather alongside their religious role. The St Paul’s partnership takes that conversation somewhere slightly different. Can these buildings also become part of London’s leisure and cultural infrastructure?
For many Londoners, a church, mosque, synagogue or temple may play little part in their life. Yet these buildings remain prominent features of neighbourhoods across the city, and often contain spaces quite unlike anything being built today. Music, exhibitions, talks and performances offer another reason to cross the threshold.
Their attraction as venues comes partly from the fact that they are not ordinary venues. A concert beneath Wren’s dome is shaped by the architecture and history around it, as well as by the Cathedral’s continuing religious use. That identity also places limits on what can comfortably happen there. People who worship in these buildings, or attach particular spiritual and ceremonial significance to them, will not necessarily agree on where those limits should lie.
We have some experience of this ourselves. The London Society held its 2025 Love Letters to London awards in the OBE Chapel at St Paul’s. Bringing writers, actors, judges and guests into the Cathedral for an event celebrating London felt entirely natural, while still feeling unmistakably like an occasion taking place within St Paul’s rather than simply another hired venue.
St Paul’s itself is hardly short of visitors. Elsewhere in London, however, the issue is more pressing. Historic faith buildings are expensive to maintain and the communities around them continue to change. At the same time, affordable and distinctive spaces for music, performance and other shared activities are not easy to find.
The answer will be different for every building. Some will accommodate a much wider programme than others, depending on their congregation, architecture and purpose. What is interesting about St Paul’s is the decision to test that boundary through a long-term partnership rather than an occasional one-off concert.
The London Society will be watching how that develops over the next four years. If fabric can bring people through the doors who might otherwise never think of entering St Paul’s, the experiment could offer useful lessons for other faith buildings trying to remain active parts of London life without becoming something entirely different.
