The Music Venue Trust has issued a bid to the wider music industry for continued funding for grassroots music venues following news that PRS for Music and the Arts Council are reducing their support.

The PRS for Music board recently voted to dramatically reduce funding of its PRS Foundation, which supports venues as well as emerging artists, from 2024 onward. Arts Council England, meanwhile, will be ending its Supporting Grassroots Live Music grant scheme in March.

Addressing delegates at Venues Day in London on 10/18, MVT CEO Mark Davyd “strongly urged” the orgs to think again, asserting, “This is the wrong time to take money out of the grassroots ecosystem, whether that’s for venues, for artists or for touring. The number of opportunities for new and emerging artists to perform is absolutely vital to the future health of U.K. live music and we need to see those opportunities financially supported more than ever before.”

MVT says the number of shows taking place in the grassroots circuit dropped by 28% last year, with nearly 50k fewer shows taking place in the last 12 months than in the same period in 2019.

At the same time, MVT has launched a funding initiative that will give U.K. grassroots venues grants of up to £5k to support small-scale capital applications as well as staffing and training. The fund has been made possible by donations from ticket sales of MVT’s recent Revive Live program of gigs around the U.K., a partnership with The National Lottery.

MVT is seeking further donations to maintain and expand the fund and make it a permanent source of support. Davyd called it “an important indication of how the grassroots sector supports and nurtures each other," adding, "We hope that the industry will see this as a real chance to make a genuine difference.”