This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Education & Events Live Business
New programme sets out to champion and support daytime educational and community events in independent music venues
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 3 December 2021
The community interest company behind Independent Venue Week has launched a new initiative called Yes We Can, which will present, publicise and champion a series of educational and community events in music venues during the daytime. The aim, organisers say, is to encourage independent venues “to open their doors to their local communities, diversify their programming and cement their position as cultural hubs for learning, creativity, arts and culture”.
Launching the Arts Council England backed programme, Independent Venue Week founder Sybil Bell said yesterday: “Through initiatives like Independent Venue Week, the importance of small independent venues to the UK’s music scene has become widely recognised. However, we’ve always believed that these spaces play an even more significant role in the social fabric of the UK. They’re not only a focal point for music and the arts, they’re outlets for entire communities up and down the country”.
“Yes We Can provides a spotlight and programme for this hugely important but less celebrated work to encourage more of it to go on in small music venues”, she adds. “Whether that’s for parent and toddler groups, for the elderly, for young people or in support of LGBTQ+ or disabled people. Our goal is to encourage even more venues to open their doors and embrace a range of inclusive, community-based activities, giving people the chance to come together, in person, and develop relationships and skills to enrich their lives, all with music at its heart”.
Events that will be promoted under the Yes We Can banner include sessions for parents of toddlers focused on how “music helps play, bonding and development”; soundcheck sessions where young people get to watch a soundcheck, and meet and talk with artists and crew; and a fourteen week education course taking place at Ipswich venue The Smokehouse, where the whole initiative was officially launched yesterday.
There will also be partnerships with organisations like Attitude Is Everything, Drake Music, Help Musicians UK and many of the music industry’s trade bodies, seeking to make the music business more inclusive and accessible, while providing more support for the health and wellbeing of the wider music community.
Confirming the Arts Council’s support, its Director Of Music, Claire Mera-Nelson, said: “As we move beyond lockdown and into a recovery phase, the importance of independent, grassroots music venues to the local and artistic communities they serve is greater than ever. Independent Venue Week has been a vital ingredient in the success of our grassroots live music sector, showcasing our brilliant independent venues and artists across the country each year; but now their work will become even more important as they move to deliver year-round development, education and community programmes on a national basis through the Yes We Can initiative”.
“Thanks to the National Lottery we’re pleased to be able to support Yes We Can and the grassroots venues it benefits across the country”, she added. “We’re excited by the opportunities this work will open up to venues, artists and communities alike – helping to explore new ways to re-energise spaces, attract new audiences, provide innovative platforms for a new generation of artists and support venues to become even more inclusive and further cement themselves within the cultural and social fabric of the places in which they are based”.
More details about the programme are available at canyoucicit.com/yeswecan
