Halifax Piece Hall have announced an innovative ticket scheme in which customers can donate money to support grassroots music venues in the Calderdale Borough through Music Venue Trust’s (MVT) Pipeline Investment Fund.
The Piece Hall have become the first major venue in the UK to offer the option to donate and directly support independent local venues at the point of purchase. This is after the Piece Hall signed a landmark agreement with the Music Venue Trust as well as with promoters Cuffe and Taylor, allowing the venue to give customers the option to donate to the MVT via Ticketmaster.
Groundbreaking deal to support Yorkshire’s independent music venues!
The funding agreement with @musicvenuetrust means that for all 2024 shows at The Piece Hall, fans can add a donation to support grassroots music venues in Calderdale.
Read more ➡️ https://t.co/4oolZyyeTh pic.twitter.com/5f2reLo2Xb
— The Piece Hall (@ThePieceHall) October 3, 2023
Music Venue Trust CEO, Mark Davyd spoke of the groundbreaking agreement via a press release, as he said: “This has been an incredibly challenging year for grassroots music venues, with more than 100 venues forced to close their doors to live music and many more at risk. It is absolutely vital that everyone in the music industry recognises the incredible strain the grassroots sector is under, and so it’s great to see The Piece Hall leading the way with a plan that will really make a genuine difference to other venues in the local area. We are extremely grateful to The Piece Hall and Cuffe and Taylor for coming together to support the whole ecosystem around them – we hope it inspires others to follow.”
Alongside this, earlier this year the Music Venue Trust had also announced a public ownership scheme under the name #SaveOurVenues, in which they have their first acquisition: The Snug in Manchester. The initiative was first announced in May after venues like Nambucca in North London and Sheffield’s Leadmill was under threat of closing, in which Nambucca unfortunately did. The scheme is built to tackle ownership issues and secure long-term futures for grass-roots venues.
These innovations are in response to the Music Venue Trust’s warnings this year that many small music venues in the country were at a knife-edge, as the trust called out for other big players in the music industry to help. Earlier in the year, MVT CEO Mark Davyd said about this: “This is the best year for live music in the UK in terms of gross receipts that there’s ever going to be. It’s not possible to make an argument that this can be accompanied by 100 venues closing down, cutting down access to live music for communities and cutting off the talent pipeline for artists that’ll never get to play.”
