The Sanctuary Music Arena was a 22,000 sq ft, 3,500 capacity music venue in Denbigh North, Milton Keynes in the UK. It opened its doors on 6 December 1991 to ESP promotions event called Dreamscape. Its also billed as the first and only designer dance venue in the country.
The Sanctuary saw some of the UK's first legal Raves and was pivotal in the development of numerous underground electronic dance music genres, subgenres and styles. The Sanctuary played host to the UK's biggest dance music promoters, including Dreamscape, Helter Skelter Rave, Slammin Vinyl, The Cult, Gatecrasher, Hardcore Heaven, Cream, Uproar, Sidewinder and Godskitchen. The venue attracted a national audience to its legendary 12 hour all night events.
From 1995 onwards various promoters would occasionally use the adjacent "Rollers UK" roller skating rink and the "Fastrack" go-karting area in conjunction with the Sanctuary, creating an 9,000 capacity multi arena venue, one of the largest of its kind in the country.
The Sanctuary finally closed its doors on 10 July 2004 in which Slammin Vinyl held the final event with a capacity of 12,000 (a big top arena was added, along with totally open air dance space using ground adjacent to the Sanctuary) with an event that hosted some of the best UK hardcore, Drum & Bass, Old Skool and Hard Dance DJs from across the country. Sadly this legendary venue was subsequently demolished to make way for a new IKEA store as part of a development that also included the stadium mk and an Asda hypermarket.
Famous quotes containing the words sanctuary, music and/or arena:
“There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defence-line of custom and habit; we must sleep and therefore we must dream.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“Nearly all the bands are mustered out of service; ours therefore is a novelty. We marched a few miles yesterday on a road where troops have not before marched. It was funny to see the children. I saw our boys running after the music in many a group of clean, bright-looking, excited little fellows.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“... often the empowering strategies we use in the arena of love and friendship are immediately dropped when we come into the arena of politicized difference—when in fact some of those strategies are useful and necessary.”
—bell hooks (b. c. 1955)