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Music Venue Trust launches fundraising campaign
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 5 September 2017
The Music Venue Trust has announced a fundraising campaign in the run up to a benefit gig at the Electric Ballroom in Camden on 17 Oct. The organisation will also be selling a series of limited edition t-shirts designed by artists, kicking off with Frank Turner.
Monies raised will fund MVT’s campaigning work on behalf of the UK’s grassroots music venues, and in particular the Emergency Response Team initiative it launched last year, which aims to provide venues which are faced with sudden planning and/or licensing issues with legal advice and expert opinion.
The new fundraising campaign follows the recent news that Arts Council England had declined to fund the Music Venue Trust’s activities. Next month’s benefit show, under the name Fightback 2017, will take place a year on from a similar fundraising event the organisation staged last October. Artists, brands and companies interested in supporting this round of fundraising are also encouraged to come forward.
Commenting, MVT’s Strategic Director Beverley Whitrick said: “Between 2007 and 2015, over a third of the UK’s grassroots music venues were forced into closure. We were losing twenty venues a year, every year. Music Venue Trust launched our Emergency Response service in 2016 thanks to generous fundraising and support from artists, fans and brands”.
She went on: “We promised that Emergency Response would make a real difference. One year later there are the same number of venues open. This isn’t rocket science. We can stop venue closures like The Cellar in Oxford and The Sound Lounge in Tooting, we just need the resources to do it”.
