REBECCA WALKER
Live Projects Coordinator | Music Venue Trust
“As arenas and stadiums sell out well in advance, the new pattern for grassroots music venues (GMVs) seems to be that customers continue to purchase tickets later and later, leaving venues and promoters to spend more on advertising and sit at the edges of their seats on whether the shows will prove to be a break even,” explains Rebecca Walker, live music coordinator for the UK’s Music Venue Trust, a charitable organization founded to help preserve, secure and improve UK music venues.
The added-on stress from spiraling energy costs has led to nearly one grassroots UK venue closing its doors per week, which is “devastating. If a GMV closes its doors in a major city where there are multiple other venues operating, it’s a sad shame. However, if a GMV closes its doors and it’s the last one in that town or village, it’s a disaster for the music ecosystem in that area,” she says. “Generations of young people will miss out on that early inspiration and rite of passage your readers all went through.”
Her biggest achievement of late has been her work with The National Lottery and Camelot on MVT’s Revive Live & United By Music campaigns.
This “has allowed me to manage an incredible team to program and promote over 900 live shows across the UK during the most difficult times and the emergence from the pandemic.” It’s also supported more than 330 headline artists along with support acts, their teams and wider live events ecosystem over three years.
“Working for Music Venue Trust is one of the most invigorating, humbling, emotionally draining, and positive positions I’ve ever been blessed to undertake,” she says.
“Our mission is to bang that drum, stand on that soap box and campaign like our hearts will explode. The wider music industry — festival, film, and everything in-between — depend more than they’ll ever realize on the GMV’s and the artists they support and invest in.
“Without sounding like a biology class, we support what is the very bottom of the ecosystem of this industry. Without our building blocks here at the beginning, where will the next Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, Arctic Monkeys or Adele come from?”
