O2 Academy Brixton crowd crush gig that killed two judged ‘high risk’ beforehand

By Robert Firth, Local Democracy Reporter

Venue bosses judged the O2 Academy Brixton gig, outside which two people died in a crowd crush, to be one of the highest risk events at the venue last year, it has been revealed.

The Asake concert on December 15 was one of just eight events at the O2 Academy Brixton in 2022 to be given the top two scores of four or five for risk, according to Philip Colvin, a solicitor representing the venue’s operator, the Academy Music Group [AMG].

Mr Colvin made the remarks on the first day of a two-day licensing hearing at Lambeth Town Hall, where the venue’s future will be decided by councillors.

The O2 Academy Brixton has been shut since the fatal crowd crush in December last year. Gabrielle Hutchinson, 23, a security worker, and mum-of-two Rebecca Ikumelo, 33, a nursing graduate, died from injuries they sustained in the crush outside the venue. A 21-year-old woman injured on the night remains in a serious condition in hospital.

The Met has made an application to Lambeth council to revoke AMG’s licence to run the O2 Academy Brixton, which would effectively see it shut for good unless a new operator took over the venue. AMG has lodged its own request with the council for permission to reopen.

Speaking at the licensing hearing on Monday, Mr Colvin said that just eight events at the venue were given the highest risk rating last year. Three of those gigs were the triplet of  shows put on by Afrobeats singer Asake at the venue in December 2022.

The events were given the lesser rating of four rather than five, based on the judgement that Asake’s genre “was not pure Afrobeats but Afropop,” Mr Colvin explained. “It was assessed as level four, with the demographic as predominantly female,” he added.

Mr Colvin said that a similar but more detailed risk assessment for each event at the venue would be shared with Lambeth council and the Met in the future if it was to reopen.

He added that the Met would be able to cancel any show they disagreed with being held as part of the conditions of the O2 Academy Brixton’s proposed new licence.

Councillor Fred Cowell, chairman of the licensing committee, expressed concern that a system that associated certain types of music with risk could end up discriminating against black music genres.

He said: “I have a broader concern about how this process will become a proxy for certain forms of discriminatory behaviour.

“Because in the documents there were a number of different thresholds for risk associated with genres of music, and four and five (the highest levels of risk) were associated with hip hop and Afrobeats.”

In response, Mr Colvin said that the O2 Academy Brixton was “deeply proud” of the music it put on, and described black music as the cultural “beating heart” of London.

He added that it was not a case of “saying there shall not be music” of particular genres, but rather a case of judging if there had been “previous disorder” associated with artists’ events.

Mr Colvin went on to defend the O2 Academy Brixton’s preparation for the Asake gig on December 15, pointing out that there were 165 security staff working at the venue on the night – the highest number ever to be employed there.

He added: “Nobody looking in from the outside would have said ‘these are the wrong measures’ or ‘these are insufficient measures’.”

Pictured top: The scene outside the O2 Academy Brixton on December 16, the day after the crowd crush (Picture: James Manning/PA Wire/PA Images)