Supporting grassroots music venues
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In every town and city you can find beloved live music venues. They’re the scenes of legendary nights out, and act as the proving grounds for bands, MCs and music producers of every stripe.
It’s these basement clubs and pub backrooms where artists first find their audiences, learn their trade and grow to love the stage. They’re places where its okay to take risks, safe to fail, and where, on any given night, a group of lucky music fans might be the first people in the world to hear a song that changes everything.
In May 2019 we announced a £1.5 million ring-fenced budget to support promotors and venues working at the grassroots level across all genres of music. The fund was created to help develop their programming and audiences and to ensure venues are equipped for the 21st century.
Since launching the fund, we made 70 awards and invested £1.2million across the country, supporting everything from family friendly gigs to refurbished bathrooms, and helping a number of much-loved grassroots venues upgrade their kit.
What we do
We’ve supported some of the best-known grassroots venues across the country including the Macbeth in London, Hare and Hounds in Birmingham and The Louisiana in Bristol and The Independent in Sunderland. We’ve provided the funds to develop their programming and upgrade vital technology like PAs and Lighting. We have also recently supported the 100 Club in London to enable an emerging female promoter to host a festival, upgrade sound equipment, build a new website and improve accessibility to the venue. This investment helps the venues attract a wider range of artists and audiences, and lets them provide a quality experience for them once they get there.
Building improvements
People have a lot of affection for their favourite live music venues. These buildings develop a personality and a feel all their own. As such its important they’re properly cared for and improved so everyone can access and enjoy them.
A great example is Ramsgate Music Hall. Our funding helped them sort out their plumping problems, and also created the opportunity to revamp their toilets. They’re proud to be the one of the only live music venue in the district with gender neutral toilets, to better serve the area’s high LGBTQ+ population.
Family friendly gigs
We want everyone to be able to enjoy live music in their favourite grassroots venues.
Manchester’s Babyrocksampler have received funding to programme family friendly gigs in small venues across the city. It’s a project that doubles earning potential for the artists, brings new audiences and new revenue into the building, and creates opportunities to enjoy live music to new parents and carers. This is a demographic that often struggles to find time and appropriate opportunities to get to a gig. It also gives young kids their first taste of live music, creating the next generation gig goers.
Talent development
Reform Radio support grassroots talent development in Manchester, and used our funding to upgrade the kit in their live room. This improved the quality of the show and the experience of the artists who get to play a live show that is professionally recorded and broadcast by an all-female tech team trained as part of the programme.
Growing an audience
Ruin Fest will enable six different promoters to stage six weekend festivals in a single venue in Brighton. By putting on a diverse offering and incorporating many genres it will attract diverse audiences to the venue over the course of the year.
There is still lots of work to do but with initiatives like this week’s Independent Venues Week and Music Venue Trust going from strength to strength, and the recent announcement that grassroots venues will have their business rates reduced by up to 50%, it feels like a great time for the sector.
We are therefore also pleased to announce that we will continue to ring-fence £1.5m for the grassroots live music sector in 2020/2021 and look forward to receiving applications from lots more venues and promoters over the coming year.
