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:
“He took the props down used for propping open,
And set them up again for propping shut,
The widespread double doors two stories high.
The advantage-disadvantage of these doors
Was that tramp taking sanctuary there
Must leave them unlocked to betray his presence.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“On the first days, like a piece of music that one will later be mad about, but that one does not yet distinguish, that which I was to love so much in [Bergotte’s] style was not yet clear to me. I could not put down the novel that I was reading, but I thought that I was only interested in the subject, as in the first moments of love when one goes every day to see a woman at some gathering, or some pastime, by the amusements to which one believes to be attracted.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Children treat their friends differently than they treat the other people in their lives. A friendship is a place for experimenting with new ways of handling anger and aggression. It is an arena for practicing reciprocity, testing assertiveness, and searching for compromise in ways children would not try with parents or siblings.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)