Music Venue Trust warns 20 grassroots venues could close for good

March 2021 marks an entire year since our lives were first forced to a halt, twelve months since ‘unprecedented circumstances’ and ‘new normal’ became the phrases of the zeitgeist. But while many businesses have flirted in and out of opening to the public, music venues have remained dormant. The worry now is that some may never wake up.

Music Venue Trust (MVT), a registered charity since 2014, works to protect the hundreds of grassroots music venues found across the UK. In November 2020, MVT announced that 30 of these venues were at risk of permanent closure following the pandemic – including Boom in Leeds, The Windmill in Brixton, and Spiritual Bar in London. While 16 of the original 30 sites have now been removed from the so-called Red List, a further six venues were added in their place last week.

“The crisis is nearing its final lap, but we need to make sure these venues finish the race,” says Mark Davyd, CEO of Music Venues Trust. “With the support of artists and audiences, we have fought our way through the last 11 months venue by venue, case by case, trying to make sure that we are able to Reopen Every Venue Safely.

“These 6 newly highlighted venues need urgent help, and we still have 14 venues that were on our original Red list that we can’t yet guarantee will survive to bring live music back to our communities. We are completely determined that they will.”
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Grassroots venues hold a crucial place in the UK music scene, providing a platform for emerging artists to progress and acting as staples of local communities country-wide. London’s The Black Heart has been running a crowdfunding campaign, reaching out to the local community as a small, independently owned venue...

Read the full article on The Rodeo here.