South London’s grassroots music venues at risk of permanent closure

The Covid-19 pandemic has put six of South London’s grassroots music venues at imminent risk of closing permanently and a campaign has started to try and save them.

Music Venue Trust has announced #saveourvenues, a national campaign to save hundreds of grassroots music venues in the UK at imminent risk of being closed permanently.

The venues at risk in South London are; Peckham Audio in Peckham, Windmill Brixton in Brixton, Music Room in New Cross, The Clapham Grand in Clapham, Le QueCumBar in Battersea and IKLECTIK in Waterloo.

These grassroots venues play a crucial role in the development of music, nurturing local talent, providing a platform for artists to build their careers and develop their music and their performance skills.

These venues also play a vital role in the cultural and economic vibrancy of any community.

The venues closing would be catastrophic for the music industry and the local communities that enjoy it. These spaces are pipelines for talent and lifelines for the communities they serve.

Artists will be performing ‘at home’ gigs in support of their local venues, chosen from a list of venues currently in crisis which can be found at the campaign website www.saveourvenues.co.uk.

Each venue will have their own fundraising page with a clear target of the funds it needs
to raise to stay afloat throughout this difficult period.

Once a target is reached any excess revenue will go to the central #saveourvenues fund
to help the wider grassroots music venue community.

Music fans can get involved donating to a specific venue’s fundraising page on the website or watch ‘at home’ shows by artists supporting the #saveourvenues campaign.

One of the main drivers of this initiative is the musician Frank Turner whose recent series of Independent Venue Love shows for local venues raised thousands of pounds for the campaign.

Frank Turner said: “The UK live music industry is staring into the abyss right now. I’m not able to save the whole thing on my own, but I decided to do a series of livestream shows to raise money for specific independent venues that I know and love, and that are in serious risk of disappearing right now.

“The success of these shows demonstrated the love that exists between music fans and their favourite grassroots music venues so the #saveourvenues campaign is a brilliant way of building on that and hopefully giving artists and music fans a chance to get involved and play a big part in helping them survive.”

Music Venue Trust’s CEO Mark Davyd said: “Without the support of music fans and artists literally hundreds of the UK’s grassroots music venues could go out of business, never to return,in the coming months.

“Please help to save every single grassroots music venue in the UK so that it can reopen after this crisis and continue to be a home to our musicians and our communities.”