Welsh government to support grassroots music

Politicians say that grassroots music venues are important hubs for local music talent and offer a fantastic avenue for musicians and performers to cultivate and nurture their creativity.

They are concerned at the decline and closure of many such places and have now launched a mapping exercise to look at how they can help.

Lord Elis-Thomas, Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism said issues surrounding closure are often complex, being a mixture of problems that can be unique to each venue’s situation, with responsibilities lying with different agencies such as local authorities, law enforcement and business support organisations - as well as government.

“We want to make it easier for talented people to develop long-term careers in the music industry in Wales. Part of this involves supporting grassroots music venues to help them remain viable," he said.

“A potential dearth of live music venues threatens Wales’ talent pipeline. We are aware of a lot of the challenges they face across the country and will continue to look at ways to work collaboratively with the sector to address them.

“Any decisions we make around support for this branch of the creative industries must be based on accurate, up to date evidence and to that end we have commissioned the highly experienced team from Landsker to create a map of grassroots music venues across Wales.”

The mapping exercise will establish a definition of a ‘grassroots music venue’ which is based on that of the Music Venue Trust but which is tailored to the situation in Wales provide a geographical map of grassroots music venues across the whole of Wales, recording a series of information for each venue and identify clusters of venues and any common characteristics.