When David Bowie passed away in 2016, the world mourned the loss of a musical chameleon whose influence stretched across five decades and countless genres. Yet, as fans celebrated his final album, Blackstar, few realized that Bowie’s creative fire had not dimmed even in his last months. In a remarkable turn, archivists recently uncovered a secret trove of Bowie’s unrealized projects—ideas that never made it to the stage or screen, but now, at last, are stepping into the spotlight.
According to BBC, the most tantalizing discovery was a set of meticulously detailed notes for an 18th-century musical, simply titled The Spectator. Locked away in Bowie’s New York study, the project’s existence was unknown to even his closest collaborators. The study itself was a fortress of inspiration—always locked, with only Bowie and his personal assistant holding the keys. It was here that Bowie pinned his creative thoughts to the walls and filled notebooks with sketches, character outlines, and plot twists, all awaiting discovery.
The notes for The Spectator have now been donated to the V&A Museum, joining the rest of Bowie’s extensive archive. Fans and scholars will soon have the chance to view these materials in person when the David Bowie Centre opens at the V&A East Storehouse in Hackney Wick on September 13, 2025. Madeleine Haddon, the collection’s lead curator, told BBC that even Bowie’s work desk will be on display, offering visitors a glimpse into the artist’s creative sanctum.
So, what was The Spectator? Inspired by the daily periodical of the same name, which ran for 555 issues from 1711 to 1712, Bowie’s musical would have explored the vibrant, chaotic world of 18th-century London. The notes reveal a fascination with the city’s criminal underworld, including stories of notorious gangs and the infamous thief “Honest” Jack Sheppard. Bowie even considered making Sheppard a central character, alongside the “thief-taker general” Jonathan Wild, the vigilante responsible for Sheppard’s downfall.
One particularly striking note imagines the aftermath of a public hanging: “surgeons fighting over corpses.” Another references the Mohocks, a gang of high-born young men who terrorized London’s streets in 1712. Professor Bob Harris, an Oxford historian, explained to BBC that Bowie was drawn to the city’s “juxtapositions between high and low, between the virtuous and the criminal,” a world where “these things existed cheek by jowl.”
Bowie’s interest extended beyond crime and punishment. He constructed a chronology of the early 18th century, delving into the rise of painters like Joshua Reynolds and William Hogarth, and the creation of the Royal Academy. According to Haddon, Bowie was intrigued by how musicals and art in this era were used for political satire, especially against the Robert Walpole government. “It seems he was thinking, ‘What is the role of artists within this period? How are artists creating a kind of satirical commentary?’” she observed.
Perhaps most compelling is the sense that Bowie saw parallels between the Enlightenment and the modern world. Working on The Spectator in the US in 2015, he may have been reflecting on contemporary political currents, pondering the power of art to spark change. As Haddon mused, “Was he thinking about that: the power of art forms to create change within our own political moment?”
But The Spectator is just one facet of Bowie’s creative legacy now coming to light. As reported by The Telegraph, the V&A’s archive—painstakingly organized by Bowie himself from the mid-1990s—contains more than 90,000 items: costumes, lyrics, artwork, correspondence, and a wealth of unfinished projects. Some, like the ice-blue Freddie Burretti suit from the “Life on Mars?” video or the crystal orb from Labyrinth, have already become iconic. Others, never before seen by the public, are now set to intrigue and inspire anew.
Among these “unrealised projects” is Hunger City, a dystopian film concept from the early 1970s. Conceived after Bowie’s attempt to adapt George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was rebuffed by Orwell’s widow, Hunger City featured a gang leader named Halloween Jack and a vision of capitalism’s dying days. Though the film was never made—possibly due to Bowie’s acting commitments in The Man Who Fell to Earth—its DNA lived on in the 1974 album Diamond Dogs and its subsequent tour.
Then there’s Major Tom, a film project from 1975 that would have followed Bowie’s astronaut alter ego through a web of conspiracies, fake moon landings, and existential crises. The archive includes a handwritten plot outline and a reading list of technical rocket manuals, showing Bowie’s deep commitment to authenticity, even as he battled personal demons of drug dependency and depression. Though the project was shelved, Bowie returned to Major Tom’s story in the 1980 hit “Ashes to Ashes.”
Other abandoned works include The Catastrophy Cabinet, a surrealist TV play about a haunted cabinet of curiosities bringing chaos to its owners, and All the Emperor’s Horses, a film based on David Kidd’s memoir of revolutionary China. For the latter, Bowie and Kidd developed a treatment, discussed contracts, and even planned a scouting trip to China—though conflicting schedules ultimately derailed the project. Bowie’s personal copy of Kidd’s book, which he counted among his favorites, now sits in the V&A archive.
Perhaps the most ambitious of all was Leon in India, a planned live stage show in Mumbai featuring a sprawling cast of local actors, musicians, and dancers. Developed with Brian Eno and artist André Heller, the project was envisioned as a “musical village ritual,” but its projected $1 million budget proved insurmountable. Elements of the narrative, however, resurfaced in Bowie’s 1995 album Outside, which wove together a cast of fictional characters and even included plans for a CD-ROM adaptation.
The opening of the David Bowie Centre marks a rare opportunity for the public to engage with the full breadth of Bowie’s creative universe—finished and unfinished alike. About 200 items will be on display at the new centre, but visitors can also book appointments to view any item from the archive, from handwritten lyrics to stage costumes. As Haddon put it, “If you think about how so many young people today don’t want to be defined by a singular genre, Bowie really was a pioneer for that. I hope people take away the breadth of impact he’s had on popular culture—but I also hope people will be prompted to think about the tools and processes Bowie used that they can apply to their own creativity.”
For Bowie, the creative journey was never truly finished. Now, with the unveiling of his secret projects, fans and scholars alike are invited to explore the restless imagination of an artist who was always looking forward—sometimes to places even he never reached.