The Music Venue Trust (MVT) has been taking action against the quickly disappearing small venues across the UK for over 8 years. Bringing together fans, artists and crew members to show a unified community still cares about our precious hot-spots across the land. Supporting hundreds of local haunts historic and legendary that these days, with rent prices soaring, may go extinct without their help. Now, the MVT has launched a new initiative which seeks to buy these venues and protect them at all cost in a form of benevolent ownership.
In an effort that has been described as; “The National Trust, but for venues”. The initiative looks to secure the futures of these venues by seeking donations in the form of community shares. Investors can buy in to the initiative “from £200 to £100,000 and receive 3% APR on their investment. “ With the aim of raising “£3.5M to buy the freeholds for 9 UK Grassroots Music Venues.” before the end of 2022. Going forward, the initiative will seek to grow and expand to prevent beloved haunts from closing their doors.
Matt Otridge (the MVT Ownership Coordinator) highlighted the aims of this launch, stating; “We’re calling this bit the pilot project, and we’re hoping that eventually it will grow and grow into a point where we have hundreds of venues that are owned by Music Venue Properties and hundreds of venues that would benefit from having a landlord that literally can’t be motivated by profits because it’s a not-for-profit organisation, as well as a landlord that shares their ambitions in seeing more money going back into the circuit.”
Discussing the recent case of Sheffield own iconic venue, The Leadmill. The Music Venue Trust CEO Mark Davyd elaborated on the perils of todays property market surge; “It remains the case that if a venue doesn’t own its own building or doesn’t have a benevolent relationship with the landlord of that building, then it’s always under threat – that’s the truth of economics, the landlord may decide to sell at any time, the landlord may do a rent review at any time – all of these things can cause the closure of a business, and there’s not much you can do about it while you’re a tenant.”
No grassroots music venue in the UK is sustainable or resilient,no venue can have 100% confidence in its future,or 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
— Music Venue Trust (@musicvenuetrust) April 26, 2022
If you would like to pledge a donation to the MVT’s #OwnOurVenues charity, you can find any and all information at their website, to ensure that the beating heart of our shared loved, never stops thumping!
