Every week is Independent Venue Week

Today concludes the final day of Independent Venue Week, and while I intended to post this at the beginning of the week, I think the message is actually more meanginful as the week comes to a close. Anyway my excuse is that I've actually being pre-occupied supporting live music, managing 4 gigs, across 2 cities and 5 venues.

Independent Venue Week is the UK’s annual celebration of independent music and arts venues, and people that own run and work in them. It was founded in 2013 by Sybill Bell and a growing number of 200+ venues participate every year. Valued long term partners of IVW include Arts Council England and BBC 6 Music. IVW is also championed by a different ambassador every year, which have included; Collin Greenwood (Radiohead), Arlo Parks, Anna Calvi, Adrian Utley, Nadine Shah, Wolf Alice, Wet Leg and many more.

To someone like me, who lives and breathes music, Independent Venue Week is every week. From personally working within a venue like The Adelphi, I get to see first-hand just how much of a difference a really good week, or a really bad week makes. If we only supported our venues one week of the year, none of them would survive. They are the budding place and fertile soil for the artists of the future, a first base to the beanstalk to the top. I wrote this poem to encapsulate my thoughts. The backdrops are two of my favourite venues in Hull, The Adelphi and Dive HU5.