PHOTOGRAPHY Emily White
WITH THANKS TO Salomon
“Honestly, I never woke up and jumped out of bed thinking ‘I want to solve the ticketing industry!'” explains Hannah Makonnen. She founded PLACE in 2023 out of a simpler instinct: London’s independent creative scene needed a home. What started as a response to a gap in third spaces and visibility has grown into one of the city’s leading event discovery platforms, now home to hundreds of collectives and over 15,000 tickets sold to their independent events. “Ticketing was just the natural infrastructure of what we were building, but the core of PLACE is about people, discovering new interests and therefore yourself.”
Makonnen originally started out documenting London’s underground collectives as a writer, planning to start a magazine, until a creative mentor, aware of the financial risks posed to print media, advised her against it, which got her thinking. “On what other level can we authentically represent and support creative subcultures? I landed on a discovery platform,” she explains.
If you’re a creative, a community leader, or just a young person on the internet, you’re likely exhausted by the overuse of “support”. The word gets thrown around constantly: “support local,” “support artists,” “support independent.” But most of the time, support is treated as some intangible feeling, rather than an action. Encouragement is important, but it’s not enough to pay the venue hire, nurture audiences, or offer creatives the infrastructure they need to keep creating. Real support is practical, structural, financial, logistical and communal. It is about building systems that allow other people to exist, create and sustain what they do.
Over the past two years, PLACE has steadily been turning actioned support into an interdependent network, building a platform that its users say has helped them discover new communities, new interests and the confidence to step outside of their usual social circles altogether.
Makonnen could see that behind every chess club, art club, social or group hike is usually a small but passionate group of people doing everything themselves, from planning to promoting, often funding the entire thing out of their own pockets, sustained by enormous amounts of invisible labour. “We understood how much time and effort they’re putting into the events, and how much of their own money they’re putting into this for people to have spaces to exist,” she says.
We understood how much time and effort they’re putting into the events, and how much of their own money they’re putting into this for people to have spaces to exist.
As demand for structural support grew, so did the platform’s ambitions. What had begun as a discovery and ticketing platform had become a genuine ecosystem – collectives that once operated in isolation were now finding each other, collaborating, and building something with real collective weight. That weight opened doors that had long felt out of reach: brands, institutions, and spaces that independent creatives had admired from a distance were now taking notice.
PLACE’s second birthday brought this into focus. In March, the platform hosted its first public in-person event, partnering with footwear brand Salomon to bring that vision to life. “This was something we had wanted to do from the very start,” explains Hannah. Collectives came together to create a day of experiences that let people explore their interests on their own terms, whether through a curated listening room, a chess tournament, or a creative workshop. It was a celebration of the communities that had championed PLACE from its earliest days, and proof of what they could build together.
Across London, the conditions that once supported young and emerging creatives have steadily eroded. More than 1,200 council-run youth centres have closed across the UK since 2010, while youth service spending has been cut by over 70%, leading to the loss of over 30% of London’s youth clubs between 2010 and 2019. In many areas, the spaces that once allowed young people to gather, experiment and build community have disappeared altogether. Platforms like PLACE are a response to that withdrawal, stepping in to provide the infrastructure that has vanished.
How do you actually speak directly to your audience? That’s something we’re thinking about all the time: the ways we can build our platform to better serve the communities so they can concentrate on actually serving people, rather than understanding the whims of the algorithms.
Similarly, social media platforms have become the primary way creatives and collectives reach their audiences, leaving their carefully planned events at the mercy of unpredictable algorithms. “As we’ve grown, we discovered individual problems that each collective faces: managing their audience through social media, in a climate where you’re working for these companies that want you to hit their metrics rather than your own,” she explains. “How do you actually speak directly to your audience? That’s something we’re thinking about all the time: the ways we can build our platform to better serve the communities so they can concentrate on actually serving people, rather than understanding the whims of the algorithms.”
She positions PLACE as the intermediary that helps remove some of that pressure. “We will represent you, we will help you find funding and become fully sustainable in your practice, so that you can keep making spaces for everyone else.”
Internally, PLACE operates much like the communities it serves – collaborative, low-ego, and built on trust. Makonnen drew her team from the people closest to her: housemate Kirsty Duncan on production, software engineer Chubiyojo Michael Adejoh, and two friends she met at university, Donna Salek and Ufedo Omale, handling partnerships and legal work respectively. “Through learning as we go, we’ve been able to become sustainable and make it into something that really resonates culturally. People are looking for spaces to hang out, looking for their niche, and all that alignment has come into the success of PLACE and where it is today.”
Through learning as we go, we’ve been able to become sustainable and make it into something that really resonates culturally. People are looking for spaces to hang out, looking for their niche, and all that alignment has come into the success of PLACE and where it is today.
Much of the platform’s work centres around what are often called third spaces: places that are neither home nor work, but a separate space where community can be nurtured. Third spaces are often framed as leisure, but for many people, they are far more important than that; they are integral to meet people, develop new interests, and, sometimes, simply to exist without pressure. Many of these spaces also provide alternatives to traditional nightlife, creating ways to socialise that don’t revolve around alcohol or hitting the clubs.
But the existence of these spaces depends on continual support behind the scenes. Community spaces cannot exist on goodwill alone; they require time, labour and money. Many collectives operate on pay-what-you-can models or low-cost ticketing to remain accessible, but that still requires audiences to recognise the value of what is being created. “If you’re participating in the community, how are you actually giving back to that community, as much as they’re giving to you?” she asks. Supporting independent culture is not just about attending events but about sustaining the people who organise them, whether that means paying for a ticket when you can, telling other people about the space or continuing to show up over time. Community is not just something you consume; it is something you help maintain.
If you’re participating in the community, how are you actually giving back to that community, as much as they’re giving to you?
This idea of mutual support is at the heart of PLACE and the collectives it uplifts. The platform supports these groups by giving them infrastructure and visibility, while collectives support PLACE by working with and promoting the platform, and that collective strength then attracts attention, funding and partnerships that can be redistributed back into the community. “Because we act as an umbrella, it means that we’re stronger together,” Makonnen explains. When we get funded, they get funded too. That’s how we will continue to stay afloat: by being a strong ecosystem with our collectives.”
In that sense, PLACE’s purpose is part of a wider support system for independent culture in London. If the past few years have shown anything, it is that creative communities rarely disappear because people stop caring; they disappear because the infrastructure around them collapses. Supporting them is not just about enthusiasm or encouragement, but about building the infrastructure that allows culture to survive, grow and thrive.
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