Silent Barn To Close In April, Owners Announce

BUSHWICK, BROOKLYN — The beloved DIY venue Silent Barn will shut down at the end of April, owners announced Tuesday.

Silent Barn Collective members will permanently shutter the studio space at 603 Bushwick Ave. for financial reasons, the group posted on their website.

“Despite the incredible support we have received from our community,” organizers wrote, “the financial and functional challenges of running a space on this scale have created an unsustainable environment with no realistic way forward.”

Silent Barn has been providing Bushwick with live shows, exhibits, educational programs, and affordable artist studios since its founding in 2006.

While it was best known for its late night events, the organizers' statement focused on Educated Little Monsters, an arts program for local kids that has been running since 2014, and pleaded with readers to provide ELM with financial support.

“We feel a particular sense of urgent responsibility in encouraging donations to ELM, whose music and arts programming serves kids of all ages, while centering involvement from Bushwick natives—those who were living here long before the Silent Barn opened, whose neighborhoods continue to be severely impacted by gentrification, and whose programs will now experience further displacement.”

Silent Barn Collective also promised that closing the 603 Bushwick Ave. location would not mean the end of Silent Barn.

“The end of the current location does not mean the end of Silent Barn as an organization, the wrote. “The community that has been forged around the Silent Barn will not be gone.

Read the entire statement on the Silent Barn website.

Photo courtesy of GoogleMaps/Sept. 2017