Lazy Thinking, a music venue located in the Inner West of Sydney, is permanently closing its doors later this month.
In a social media post shared on Tuesday (4 August), venue operators announced that they’ve allegedly been evicted from their Dulwich Hill space.
Their landlord gave them until the end of the year to leave the space, but due to the toll of keeping a music venue operational in 2026, they’re closing four months early – on Saturday, 29 August – to focus on “building something [rather] than subsidising a building we already know we’re going to lose.”
Lazy Thinking opened just three years ago, taking over a former butcher’s shop in July 2023. Urban List notes that the venue has always been “community-focused” and operated with an artist-first model.
Throughout its short history, Lazy Thinking – run by Jim Flanagan – charged no venue hire fees and has never turned away punters who can’t afford tickets. The not-for-profit space has stayed open thanks to the support of donors, government grants, one-off contributions, and memberships from the local community.
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The final show at Lazy Thinking will take place on Saturday, 29 August. The venue team noted that every month that the space has been open, it’s lost money, but due to support, it’s kept on rolling.
“Every month we’re open means another month of fundraising to cover those losses,” they shared. “Three years of doing that is pretty tiring, has taken a toll, and we’d rather spend the next four months building something than subsidising a building we already know we’re going to lose. So it goes.”
While the venue is closing, Lazy Thinking won’t stop serving the Sydney music community.
It’s revived its record label, offers a year-round artist residency program, “started a sync arm aimed at getting early-career artists in the door, and were two weeks off launching a free education and training program,” which will unfortunately be slightly delayed.
“So, we’re going to use this as an opportunity rather than a setback,” venue operators said. The current goal is to farewell the space later this month, take a breather, and then “building an even better, more meaningful artist development organisation.”
The statement continued, “We’ll shift our fundraising towards establishing a new permanent home, something we will work tirelessly towards. One that’s financially sustainable, can comfortably be supported by our new model and reflects the way we now live and socialise.
“This is life. We remain eternally optimistic about the future, both of Lazy Thinking and the local industry, despite the extreme challenges the latter faces.”
The Lazy Thinking team has kept “a handful” of dates free this month for artists with a “genuine” connection to the venue who might want to perform there one more time. You can reach out via the Lazy Thinking Instagram account.
Last month, Lazy Thinking introduced a new funding model, which included two different membership tiers for punters to directly support the venue.
At the time, Flanagan shared (via Limelight Arts), “[Lazy Thinking] was never going to work commercially.
“The live music industry still largely survives off a very old, simple social contract that sees artists taking most or all of the door, while venues survive by selling beer and chardonnay. People are generally drinking significantly less than they once did, while younger audiences increasingly have substantially less disposable income than previous generations.
“The smaller the venue, the more acute that reality becomes. Running a small music venue in the early mid-2020s cannot work as a commercial enterprise if the old-world model is applied.”
The Lazy Thinking news follows the recent closures of other Sydney venues, MoshPit Bar, Mary’s Underground, and Divine Playhouse.