05/12/2023
Dear Festival Colleagues
Our present crisis is your future problem.
You have to get directly, and we mean financially, involved in the development of British talent right from the ground up. There are hundreds of grassroots music venues across the country who want to do this research and development work for artists, helping them hone their skills and build their careers so they can be your festival headliners. There are thousands of artists that have the talent and the ambition to fill your stages.
But these artists and those local venues and promoters simply cannot afford to do that work on their own. There is going to have to be a complete rethink on how the live music industry funds research and development to create the artists it needs. It will require everyone, including you and your festival, to contribute. Every single ticket we sell should have a research and development contribution in it. We already have a mechanism in place to collect and distribute such funds. With your help we can develop and grow it. You can, and should, be a stakeholder, with a say in what it does and where it goes.
We have been telling you this for more than five years. Please listen and act now.
Our present crisis - 125 grassroots music venues have closed this year alone - is your future problem.
It can be solved if we all work together to do it. Stop waiting for that call from Taylor Swift to be your future headliner and work with us to make your own.
Read full article here: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/dec/02/festival-organisers-sound-alarm-as-big-name-artists-shun-their-events
