The Music Venue Trust (MVT), has announced the first recipients of its major new funding initiative, which provides grants of up to £5,000 for UK grassroots music venues.
The Pipeline Investment Fund was established with the support of members of the Music Venues Alliance and was mainly funded by donations from ticket sales of MVT’s recent ‘Revive Live’ programme of gigs around the UK in partnership with The National Lottery. The MVT said,
“Every headline artist should be able to know with confidence that when they reach the top of our industry the impact of their success ripples back to directly support the venues and communities where they launched their career. MVT has created the mechanism to make that possible, we need the music industry to come together and make it happen.”
Small scale grant applications (up to £5,000) were invited from UK based Grassroots Music Venues to support two key areas of work including lights, sound, access, ventilation and minor building alterations together with staff training, workforce diversification, skills development and strengthening local community ties. The fund was open to all venue operators and organisations that meet any of the three definitions of a Grassroots Music Space, which can be found here.
Eleven grassroots music venues have now received almost £40,000 in total for a range of lighting, sound and associated equipment purchases, air conditioning units and building work.
The recipient venues were: Alexander’s Live (Chester), Venue38 (Ayr), The Louisiana (Bristol), The Grayston Unity (Halifax), Retro (Manchester) ,Chats Palace (London), Backstage At The Green (Kinross), Dorothy Pax (Sheffield), Servant Jazz Quarters (London), Snug (Atherton) and Three Wise Monkeys (Colchester)
Marc Armor creative director of Retro Manchester said, ” We have been struggling to keep up with the rising cost of EVERYTHING. Earlier this year me invested in a new PA system and there wasn’t enough money for a desk Without the pipeline investment we would have been working with an extremely frustrating set up …We are happy to be able to train new engineers with an….industry standard mixing desk.”
Richard Henderson Managing Director of Dorothy PAX Sheffield said, ” Our engineers will no longer have to bring in their own equipment and we will no longer have to hire in equipment at a cost…(we can) programme artists and instruments that we were unable to do before this grant…we will meet the technical riders of larger national and international musicians which we can programme grassroots support alongside.”
Paula Van Hagen, Venue Operator of Chat’s Palace, London, spoke of the impact that the grant would have on her venue saying, ” Both monitors were damaged to such an extent that repairs were ruled out….Lack of funds ruled out all options meaning that bands went to other better equipped Hackney venues. We lost our entire Autumn music programme…The Pipeline Investment Fund (has offered) a possible solution to what seems to be an insurmountable problem. It has been a huge morale boost to the whole team.“
Mark Dayvd, Founder and CEO of Music Venue Trust said, “The Pipeline Investment Fund is proof of what a huge difference relatively small amounts of money can make to local Grassroots Music Venues. Music Venue Trust is investing this money directly into facilities for artists and for local music communities improving venues for everyone. We’d like to see every stadium and arena show in the country making a small contribution to this fund. Every headline artist should be able to know with confidence that when they reach the top of our industry the impact of their success ripples back to directly support the venues and communities where the launched their career. MVT has created the mechanism to make that possible, we need the music industry to come together and make it happen.”
MVT says that it’s actively seeking further donations, particularly from the wider music industry, to maintain and expand the Pipeline Investment Fund and make it a permanent source of support for grassroots music venues. Donations can be made here
MVT has also launched its ‘Own our Venues ‘Campaign ‘which is the first step in a long term campaign to take control of the freeholds of music venue premises and bring them under a protected status of benevolent ownership, like “The National Trust, but for venues,” with fervent supporters like Ed Sheeran who has said,
“Own Our Venues is an initiative I’m really passionate about getting behind. Small, independent venues are so, so important to the music community, and I’ve played some of my favourite gigs of my career in these rooms. We’ve got to do all we can to protect these beautiful venues that we’ve all come to love for years to come.”
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Photo Credit: Shame ( by Carmel Walsh)
