The Music Venue Trust has announced that 13 out of the 30 grassroots venues on their Red List – which highlights those venues at imminent danger of permanent closure – have successfully been removed from immediate threat.
In November the charity revealed its Traffic Light campaign, a new phase of its #saveourvenues campaign, which is seeking to reopen every venue safely after the Covid-19 crisis.
This campaign directed the focus of the charity’s fundraising work behind securing the future of 30 venues who were ineligible to receive funding from, or wholly or partially unsuccessful in their application to, the government-backed Culture Recovery Funds.
As a result of the success of the campaign and a combined effort by audiences, local communities, local councils and the creative community, the following 13 venues have now been removed from the ‘red list’:
Arden Inn, Accrington,
Backstage Kinross
Boulevard, Wigan
Four Horsemen, Bournemouth
Gellions, Inverness
Hootenanny, Inverness
Plot 22, Sheffield
Rossi Bar in Brighton
Strange Brew, Bristol
The Brunswick, Hove
The Grand Elektra/ The Crypt, Hastings
The Railway Inn, Winchester
Waterloo Bar, Blackpool
Mark Davyd, CEO of Music Venue Trust, said: “We want to thank every artist, every audience member, every member of our community for taking direct action which means we are able to remove these 13 venues from the Red List right now. The love shown for these venues continues to demonstrate how important they are to people and to our towns and cities. Music Venue Trust is committed to reopening every venue safely and we are going to carry on working through this crisis until that outcome is achieved.”
Music Venue Trust is now reviewing the position of all other grassroots music venues to analyse which venues are at risk and need to be moved to the red list.
The single landing page for the crowdfunding initiative powered by Crowdfunder can be viewed at here. People can choose an individual venue to donate to and if an individual target is reached by a particular venue the surplus donations will go towards supporting other venues in crisis.
A range of merchandise is exclusively available to support this campaign. Every item bought directly supports a venue, with MVT paying the costs of printing, packing and delivery.