Music Venues Trust: New Initiatives

Music Venues Trust (MVT) outlined further plans to support grassroots venues at the annual Venues Day event at the Roundhouse in London earlier this week.

MVT CEO Mark Davyd announced several new initiatives in the opening comments of the event. These featured a new ticketing offering for small venues, an emergency response package for venues offering planning and legal advice, the provision of new audiovisual equipment for selected venues and outreach to Northern Ireland.

The ticketing initiative, a partnership with TicketWeb offers features such as assistance with PRSresponsibilities and the introduction of the ‘Maintain and Sustain’ fund, a fixed customer contribution on each ticket towards venue upkeep.

The ‘Sound And Vision’ initiative is essentially a refit scheme that will aim to provide new sound, lighting and staging facilities in 100 UK venues over five years. Partners on the scheme include AV supplier White Light, Ents 24, TicketWeb, Jack Daniel’s and Help Musicians UK, which MVTestimates will reduce a £2.2million annual budget to £970,000.

Venues Day closed with a special ‘Fightback’ fundraising concert, also at the Roundhouse, featuring sets from Public Service Broadcasting, Everything Everything and more, the proceeds of which will go towards the emergency response service.