26/04/2022
So many music venues are closing or closed
Including us
Support venues before you loose them all!!
Music Venue Trust Statement on the Closure and Permanent Loss of Nambucca
The possible loss of the iconic Nambucca grassroots music venue, which faces permanent closure on 14 May, is a terrible blow to Giles and the incredible team there, the musicians who built (and are still building) their careers there. Artists like Frank Turner, Wolf Alice, Mumford and Sons, Laura Marling The Libertines, Fat White Family, The Holloways, The Wombats. And all the artists whose names you don't yet know who may never get their chance if it closes. It's a huge blow to London’s grassroots circuit and to all Londoners who love live music.
Music Venue Trust has discussed the challenges to the future of the venue with the Nambucca team. The truth is that in these circumstances it isn’t easy see a way to prevent the closure. We will try, that’s what we do.
Gentrification, development, noise, rent demands, excessive charges, poor working conditions, there are so many challenges. However. everything Music Venue Trust deals with eventually comes back to the same core problem.
That problem is ownership.
Like 93% of the venues in the UK, this venue operator does not own the venue. If they did, Nambucca would not be closing. It’s that simple. All the other problems and challenges that grassroots music venues face eventually come back to this core point: No grassroots music venue in the UK is sustainable or resilient, no venue can have 100% confidence in its future, no venue can continue to support musicians and bring music to our communities for decades to come, unless the music venues are owned by people who want them to be music venues. If the music community wants grassroots music venues to be protected, to be secure, to be improved, to be everything they can be for the future of live music, then the music community must Own Our Venues.
Every single case of potential closure Music Venue Trust has dealt with in the last eight years comes back, eventually, to that point.
Until we, the music community, Own Our Venues, we cannot properly protect them.
So let’s do it. Let’s Own Our Venues.
