07/02/2023
SUNBIRD RECORDS - A STATEMENT
It is with deep sadness that we have to announce that Sunbird Records in Darwen has had to cease trading and is consulting with liquidators.
As many of you will know, Sunbird was built on the vision of Jonathan Lindley. Jonathan was a passionate advocate for music in his local community. He believed that Darwen deserved a grassroots music venue where the community could come together, engage, celebrate, and just enjoy great nights of fantastic music created by the town’s musicians. Jonathan sadly passed away in 2022. The local community he left behind has been doing everything it can to try and keep Jonathan’s legacy alive, and Music Venue Trust has been supporting their efforts to try and make Sunbird Records sustainable and viable. But we have a duty of care to Jonathan’s family, and to the individual people who have been trying desperately to make the venue work.
The economic conditions are just too hard. The cost of keeping this venue alive simply cannot be met from the activities it stages. Sunbird Records is a classic example of what the MVT Annual Report lays out; a Grassroots Music Venue that is absolutely essential to its local community, does everything that the music industry desperately needs it to do, but simply cannot make ends meet.
This statement is very tough for everyone at the venue and everyone at Music Venue Trust to have to make. We selected Sunbird Records to be part of the Own Our Venues campaign because we believe in Jonathan’s vision, and we know that these types of venues are going to be permanently under threat of closure until we resolve the issue of who owns them.
We believe every town and city deserves someone like Jonathan who has the passion required to make a grassroots music venue a reality. We are incredibly sad that we have not been able to save Sunbird Records. We are still working out what we do now; the Own Our Venues project has raised 50% of the capital it needs to start buying spaces. Maybe we can find a way to buy this building and support the local community to create a new operating organisation that can bring music back to Darwen. It's incredibly hard to bring a venue back when it closes, it’s one of the reasons we fight as hard as we can to stop it happening. We honestly don’t know. We know that the will among the local community is there and we will do everything we can to try to make it happen.
But alongside the sadness, we have to stop and recognise the reality. We are incredibly frustrated and angry that we have to keep saying this: Our communities need these spaces. Audiences needs these spaces. Artists need these spaces. Our music industry needs these spaces.
It is painfully ridiculous that Sunbird Records is closing, unable to afford to pay the bill to keep the lights on, in an industry that is turning over more than £5 billion a year. An industry that is planning to open 8 new arenas, but cannot find a way to raise the £10,000 to £20,000 a year it needs to keep a vital space like Sunbird open. An industry that is paying its top executives multi-million pound sums while the absolutely essential building blocks it needs to keep bringing that money in simply evaporates beneath it, uncared for and ignored. It’s not good enough and it has to change. If our music industry cannot find a way to keep the lights on at Sunbird Records then it isn’t fit for purpose.
We want to pay tribute to Jonathan’s father Steven, and to his family, who have fought tooth and nail to try and keep Sunbird afloat. We’ve let you down and we are sorry. Jonathan deserved better. You deserve better. Darwen deserves better. Our grassroots music community deserves better.
Westgarth Social Club. Base Camp Boro. Ironworks Venue. The Napier. All gone. And now Sunbird Records.
Grassroots Music Venues are closing at the rate of one a week and too many companies and individuals in the wider music industry are sitting on their hands doing nothing.
We have to do better than this.
