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Music Venue Trust removes 13 venues from crisis list

Music Venue Trust has saved 13 out of the 30 grassroots music venues (GMVs) on its Save Our Venue Red List from immediate threat.

Strange Brew in Bristol, Waterloo Bar in Blackpool and Hootenanny in Inverness are among those venues to be taken off the ‘red list,’ which is made up of those venues at imminent danger of permanent closure due to COVID-19.

In November, the charity revealed its Traffic Light plan as a new phase of its #saveourvenues campaign, which is seeking to reopen every venue safely after the pandemic.

The Traffic Light campaign threw the focus of the fundraising work behind securing the future of 30 venues who were ineligible to receive funding from, or wholly or partially unsuccessful in their application to, the government backed £1.57bn Culture Recovery Fund.

MVT said the 13 venues being removed from the crisis list is a result of the campaign and the combined effort by audiences, local communities, local councils and the creative community,

Mark Davyd, chief executive of MVT, said: “We want to thank every artist, every audience member, every member of our community for taking direct action which means we are able to remove these 13 venues from the Red List right now.

“The love shown for these venues continues to demonstrate how important they are to people and to our towns and cities. Music Venue Trust is committed to reopening every venue safely and we are going to carry on working through this crisis until that outcome is achieved.”

MVT said it is now reviewing the position of all other GMVs to analyse which venues are at risk and need to be moved onto the red list.

The charity has a single landing page for the crowdfunding initiative for ‘red listed’ venues, where people can choose an individual venue to donate to and if an individual target is reached by a particular venue the surplus donations will go towards supporting other venues in crisis.

Meanwhile, two UK music venues are set to trial a new system of digital “health passports” in a bid to reopen live gigs safely.

The trials, using the You Check app and in association with Music Venue Trust and the DCMS, are planned for London’s 100 Club and The Exchange in Bristol for March, Event Industry News reports. The events will be staged at 25-per-cent capacity with two sets of tests on the same people.