SAVING SURREY’S VENUES ONE STEP AT A TIME
Venues throughout Surrey have been handed a lifeline grant via the Government’s £1.57bn Culture Recovery Fund. The money provided to venues will go some way to helping some of the key cultural sites that exist in our community, face the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and aims to ensure that those venues have a sustainable future.
Venues such as the Yvonne and Arnaud and The Boileroom in Guildford, The Lightbox in Woking, Kingston’s Rose Theatre and Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village in Compton have all gratefully received the news that they will benefit from the fund, which is a beacon of hope, to say the least.
While some of the counties key venues have been granted some financial help, there is still a sway of cultural institutions that need your help.
Community on a global scale has endured a torrid 2020 blighted by events beyond our control, but without art and culture who would we be? What songs would we sing? If you can help your favourite venue by becoming a member or a patron, then sign up and play your part, and keep the future of our venues alive.
Another way to help is to to support The Music Venue Trust. Representing 670 independent UK music venues, the result of the current ‘lockdown’ and social distancing policies means that the prospects for many are grim.
A lot of grassroots venues are already operating on very thin margins and since these restrictions came in only 17% of them, equating to just 114, are currently secure for the next eight weeks. The situation is dire, and it is now incumbent on music fans and the wider industry to do something about it.
Put bluntly, without these venues the opportunities for artists and audiences to connect in a meaningful way at a local level will simply disappear in a lot of cases. And if they go they will never come back. Please help us to help grassroots music venues to survive this unprecedented threat to their existence. If you are a music fan who wants to help #saveourvenues you can make a donation here