‘We don’t want money going to private landlords’: UK music venues turn to community ownership

theguardian.com:

Just 24 hours before playing to one of the largest audiences on Earth, Paul McCartney could be found blasting out Hey Jude to a room of just 850 screaming fans in Frome, Somerset. His Glastonbury warmup show took place at the Cheese and Grain, a not-for-profit, member-owned venue.

“He gave a stonkingly wonderful performance,” says venue director Steve Macarthur. “One of his considerations for selecting us was he liked the fact that we were a community-controlled not-for-profit outfit with a commitment to training local people to fill jobs.”

The venue has had this structure for more than 20 years but recently there’s been a surge in venues looking to adopt community business models – be it charitable status social enterprises like the Cheese and Grain or the Tees Music Alliance in Stockton-on-Tees, the Community Interest Company (CIC) model of Birkenhead’s Future Yard, or a Community Benefit Society (CBS) model adopted by venues such as the Exchange in Bristol and The Hive in Cheshire. While these models vary slightly in structure, all are broadly underpinned by placing power and control in the hands of the local community.

“Something radical is happening,” says Mark Davyd, chief executive of the charity Music Venue Trust. “When we started in 2014, 3% of the venues in the country had a not-for-profit structure and it’s now 26%.” A combination of doom and gloom scenarios for venues around noise complaints, rent increases, evictions and redevelopment – plans to turn 6,000-capacity London nightclub Printworks, one of the UK’s most iconic venues, into offices have just been approved – has resulted in many being in precarious situations. More than a third of grassroots venues have closed in the last 20 years, nearly all are