Arts Council England submission to the Culture, Media, and Sport Committee Inquiry into Grassroots Music Venues 

March 2024

1. How Arts Council England supports culture

1.1.             Arts Council England is the national development agency for creativity and culture. We have set out our strategic vision in Let’s Create[1] that by 2030 we want England to be a country in which the creativity of each of us is valued and given the chance to flourish and where everyone of us has access to a remarkable range of high-quality cultural experiences.

1.2.            From 2023 to 2026 we will invest over £467 million of public money from Government and an estimated £250 million from The National Lottery each year to help support the sector and to deliver this vision.

1.3.            Arts Council England invests through several funding strands:

• National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs), the backbone of England’s cultural infrastructure. We’re investing £445 million each year in 985 National Portfolio Organisations from 2023-26, including music venues, galleries, museums, arts centres, libraries and more, bringing creativity and culture to villages, towns, and cities across the country.

• The National Lottery Project Grants (NLPG), our rolling, open access programme for individuals and organisations that use the arts in their work. This investment strand is crucial for artists in the early stages of their careers and for community projects. We invest £116.8 million of National Lottery funding per year through the NLPG.

• Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP), our programme to support individuals who are cultural and creative practitioners and want to take time to focus on their creative development. Until 2026 we will be investing £14.4million a year through DYCP.

• Arts Council Development Funds, which focus on a variety of areas such as: capital investment programmes, cultural education, digital culture network, museum development, arts council collection management, UK City of Culture and activities listed within out Delivery Plan[2]. We will be investing £50 million per year through our development funds until 2026.

1.4.            We also invest £76m a year from the Department for Education (DfE) in Music Hubs across the country and co-invest in several education programmes including In Harmony projects working with children and families in deprived communities, and Bridge Organisations connecting children and young people, schools and communities with art and cultural opportunities.

2. How Arts Council England supports grassroots music

2.1.               Arts Council England recognises the pivotal role that Grassroots Music Venues (GMVs) play within England’s thriving music scene.

2.2.              GMVs are valued cultural spaces within their communities, providing opportunities for people from all backgrounds to experience live music as audience members and participants.

2.3.              As well as providing a crucible for the development of onstage artist talent they are also a critical part of the pipeline for the development of the wider ecology of venue management teams, sound and lighting technicians, promoters, managers, agents, and audiences who enable musicians to develop and thrive.

2.4.             We also believe that everyone should have equal right and opportunity to attend a live music event. In delivering our 10-year strategy ‘Let’s Create’ we should be playing our part in helping ensure that by 2030 a vibrant network of grassroots live music venues is thriving across the country, and we remain committed to working with the GMV sector to achieve that.

Supporting Grassroots Live Music Fund (SGLM)

2.5.              As part of our commitment to supporting the grassroots music sector, in 2019 we announced the launch of a ring-fenced annual fund of £1.5 million within our National Lottery Project Grants programme in recognition of the challenges faced by grassroot music venues and promoters across the sector. The fund was designed to help venues and promoters develop audiences and enhance the opportunities available to artists, including taking risks on new kinds of programming or events and activities, as well as developing their businesses and growing their confidence in applying for public funding.

2.6.             From 2019 to March 2023, we invested over £10 million in 499 projects proposed by GMVs and promoters who work in and with them. Our funding helped some of the best-known grassroots venues across the country including the Macbeth in London, Hare and Hounds in Birmingham, The Louisiana in Bristol, The Independent in Sunderland, Soup Kitchen, Phreds, and White Hotel in Manchester, and District in Liverpool. We supported everything from family friendly gigs to refurbishing bathrooms, and helping venues upgrade their kit.

2.7.              Manchester’s Babyrocksampler for example have received funding to programme family friendly gigs in small venues across the city. It’s a project that doubled earning potential for the artists, bringing new audiences and new revenue into the building, creating opportunities to enjoy live music to new parents and carers.

2.8.             Reform Radio support grassroots talent development in Manchester, and they have used our funding to upgrade the kit in their live room. This improved the quality of the show and the experience of the artists who get to play a live show that is professionally recorded and broadcast by an all-female tech team trained as part of the programme.

2.9.             Our funding also helped Ruin Fest, enabling six different promoters to stage six weekend festivals in a single venue in Brighton, putting on a diverse offering and incorporating many genres and attracting diverse audiences to the venue.

2.10.          The evaluation of our Supporting Grassroots Live Music Fund showed that investment in venues and promoters had huge benefits for artists, with 80% of grantees using funds to help more artists, 63% supporting a more diverse range of artists and 59% working with higher profile artists[3].

2.11.           Local communities have benefited from 63% of grantees programming a wider range of genres with 59% of applicants developing a more diverse audience and 43% a younger audience.

2.12.          Venues have become more connected to and embedded in place, with the fund supporting 64% of grantees to engage more with local individuals and groups and 63% to develop new relationships and networks.

2.13.          38% of grantees have developed new income streams, with 45% describing themselves as more financially resilient and 41% reporting a change to their long-term models.

2.14.          Capital investment has also enabled 46% to improve their sound/lighting equipment, 29% their environmental performance, and 13% their venue accessibility.

Emergency Grassroots Music Venue Fund (EGMV)

2.15.          Grassroots music venues across England were the first recipients of the Government’s £1.57 billion Culture Recovery Fund (CRF).

2.16.          To help support grassroots music venues during the Covid-19 pandemic, Arts Council England delivered £3.36milion through the Government’s Emergency Grassroots Music Venues Fund, supporting 150 venues that were at imminent risk of closure.

2.17.          Throughout the pandemic over £41.4 million in CRF funding was received by venues and others operating in the grassroots music sector, reaching over 89% of England’s music venues[4].

2.18.          We helped save iconic venues including the Troubadour in London, where Adele and Ed Sheeran performed in the early days of their career, and the Jacaranda in Liverpool, where The Beatles played early rehearsals and one of their first gigs.

Grassroots music venues in the National Portfolio

2.19.          Our National Portfolio (NPO) has long included organisations of direct relevance to the grassroots music sector.

2.20.        Through our 2023 - 2026 NPO we will be regularly funding live music venues including Band on the Wall in Manchester, the Cambridge Junction, Future Yard CIC in Birkenhead, 2Funky Arts, promoters such as Asian Arts Agency, Punch Records, African Night Fever, Create Define Release and zerOclassikal, who work with diverse communities to help develop platforms and audiences by programming and facilitating tours.

2.21.          We are also supporting talent development organisations such as Baby People in Derby, the Midi Music Company in London, The Warren in Hull, AudioActive in Worthing, Reform Radio in Manchester and the SoCo Music Project in Southampton. These organisations all develop young people’s skills, knowledge, and confidence to take their first steps into live performance within the grassroots music sector.

2.22.         We are also funding sector development organisations including Attitude is Everything, who support the music and live event industries in valuing disabled people as audience members performers, professionals, and volunteers.

The Supporting Grassroots Music Fund

2.23.         In November 2023 we opened a new time limited Supporting Grassroots Music Fund – funded by the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) as part of the Government’s Creative Industries Sector Vision. As with its predecessor, this fund is designed to help eligible elements of the grassroots music sector develop artists and/or audiences and enhance the opportunities available, as well as developing their businesses and growing their confidence in applying for public funding.

2.24.         Through this fund we will be investing £4 million in grassroots music over the next two years. In order to reflect the wide range of spaces and skills that are needed to help musicians perform and thrive at the grassroots of the music industry, DCMS expanded the range of eligible applicants for this new strand to include festivals, rehearsal and recording studios  in addition to grassroots live music venues, venues for electronic music (including clubs and other "club-like" events), and independent promoters who were also eligible for the fund’s previous iteration[5] - grants up to £40,000 will be available until March 2025.

2.25.         Since the fund launched in November 2023, we have already seen a 94.40% success rate for applications from music venues, 100% for rehearsal studios, 66.70% for promoters, 66.70% for recording studios, and 53% for festivals.

3. How we will continue supporting grassroots music

3.1.               We recognise that the landscape for many arts and cultural organisations including theatres, galleries, independent cinemas and in particular GMVs and all those who rely on them for work remains incredibly challenging. We know that audience numbers are unpredictable and have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels, for example, and that programming schedules have not fully settled back down into their usual rhythm and that costs are increasing.

3.2.              Although our investment cannot resolve all these challenges, we are committed to ensuring that GMVs and promoters remain confident that Arts Council funding is open to them.

3.3.              Support for grassroots live music remains one of the Arts Council’s priorities for National Lottery Project Grants, (currently until September 2025). Decision panels will prioritise strong applications from grassroots music venues alongside the other eligible elements of the grassroots music sector, and going forward (beyond September 2025) we expect at the very least to maintain our current level of support - at least £1.5 million each year.

3.4.              We continue to monitor application numbers and success rates from the grassroots live music sector to our National Lottery Project Grants Supporting Grassroots Music fund, and identifying where we should prioritise advice giving and support in relation to geography and underrepresented groups.

3.5.              In addition, the Arts Council is investing in Music Venue Properties (MVP), an initiative to supporting GMV’s as a benign landlord focused on reinvesting back into the grassroots music sector. We have contributed £500,000 to MVP’s start-up phase, with the expectation of supporting the organisation to purchase the freeholds of at least five grassroots music venues in England to secure these vital community assets for the long term. To date MVP has purchased the first of these – The Snug, Atherton, Greater Manchester – with the purchase of further freeholds expected imminently.

3.6.              We will also continue to work with partners across the music industry – including the Music Venue Trust, the Association of Independent Promoters, LIVE, and UK Music - to ensure we understand the ongoing challenges that venues and promoters are facing, and through their networks provide advice and support.