How the ban of live music has affected grassroot venues

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, live music and gigs have been banned across the UK. Understandably, moshing crowds and excited fans are going to be difficult to socially distance. For a lot of people, the sweaty, close proximity crowds’ function in at gigs is half the fun and difficult to imagine a gig without. However, how has the lack of live gigs affected our countries small grassroot venues these antics usually occur in?

Grassroot venues are independent, small music venues that thrive on aspiring artists and music enthusiasts. Being independent is risky for businesses, but what these small venues facilitate is a community of musicians and music lovers to all enjoy live events, without extortionate ticket prices or massive labels. When the pandemic sent the world into lockdown, like many businesses, this dangerously affected our grassroot venues.

On the 5th of July, the government announced a ‘Culture Recovery Fund’ to help see businesses such as music venues, heritage sites and theatres through the pandemic. Despite this fund being designated to arts and culture businesses, only 135 grassroot venues across England have received funding, as of the 22nd of August. There are far more grassroot venues across England which didn’t receive funding from the government.

While these venues could operate as bars or pubs before we entered our second national lockdown, most of these venues thrived off their income from live events. Manager Sam, of the Northern Quarter in Huddersfield explained to me that over half of the calendar month was putting on live events. Even after adapting to follow government guidelines, Northern Quarter are still losing a substation percentage of income. Sam explains, “The evenings since the pandemic when we have hosted events have filled the house. We've been running a cinema night and a music night where the musicians are projected onto stage. Those nights have pretty much all sold out since we started running them. However, selling out at 25 instead of 125 is still a huge financial loss.” Another grassroot venue that has suffered is Oporto in Leeds. While Oporto also ran many live music events, on the days they weren’t, they were running EDM events. Manager Nick explains, “the restrictions make live music almost impossible. This has affected footfall on an evening, both with attendance lost (roughly 75% of capacity not allowed) and those sticking around afterwards for a drink / chat with the artists / to buy merch. The latter was of course completely stopped with the 10pm curfew which was a large part of our business. Being a late opening bar, this hit us especially hard as it meant even DJ events weren’t at all viable.”

Oporto was one of the luckier grassroot venues that received a portion of the Culture Recovery Fund. “We’ve recently received assistance from the Culture Recovery Fund which is a vital lifeline, though we only got the money on the 3rd of November despite being affected since March, the timing wasn’t the best either with us being forced to close again from 10pm on the 4th November, bringing new financial issues that funding wasn’t designed for.”

Another issue with the lack of live music is the lack of talent being showcased. Nick relays, “we’re losing great people from the industry, our sound engineers are taking full time jobs at Tesco. This loss of talent affects everyone from venues through to the artists who rely on their skills and passion.” Aspiring artist Joe Whitworth talks about how this ban has affected him as a performer. “Its really held back everything. Playing live is the best thing someone trying to succeed in the music industry can do for exposure, experience and of course income. Building up your skills and experience which is predominately done by performing live is practically impossible right now.”

Grassroot venues and their performers are all struggling due to the lack of live music. With a second lockdown just beginning, venues, performers and audiences alike will have to use their skills and innovation to make it over the hill this pandemic has caused, to make sure live music isn’t lost forever.