Joe GallopFollowing the Swansea Arena House Party which raised £10,000 for the Music Venues Trust (MVT) last month, the ATG-operated arena is further campaigning to save the city’s local live music scene.
The Swansea Music Venues Working Group, chaired by Swansea Arena venue director Lisa Mart, with representatives from local grassroots venues Sin City, The Bunkhouse, Elysium, Hangar 18 and Hippos, is petitioning the Senedd (Welsh Government) to improve late-night transport into and out of the city.
The working group said the issue is a priority as currently, in Swansea and South West Wales, most transport links East currently finish before 23:00.
The MVT has warned that 10% of grassroots music venues are at risk of closing in the near future.
Currently on more than 3,000 signatures, the group has until 7 May to get the petition’s figure to 10,000 and qualify for consideration for debate. Swansea Arena, with support from the local grassroots music venues, has penned an open letter to the government to state their case.
The petition follows the group’s first fundraising event in partnership with the MVT, The Swansea Arena House Party (pictured), which sold just under 1,000 tickets and generated £10,000 including ticketing income from the show, a £1,000 donation from Ticket 247 and optional donations via the trailblazing ATG Tickets purchase flow.
All of the money raised will be distributed by the Music Venue Trust, which will find the best investments for venues in the Swansea region.
In addition, a further £10,000 was injected back into the region’s creative sector via band and performer fees, workshop facilitator fees and creative involvement from photographers, videographers, technicians and security staff.
It has also fostered support between the venues who are now working together, including sharing staff to develop technical skills across all venues, loaning critical equipment, while the Swansea Arena is also providing parking.
Mart said, “Early on in our venue working group discussions, it became apparent that it was a shared problem between ourselves and the local grassroots venues. There is real difficulty in growing and maintaining audiences when the audiences themselves can’t rely on the means to get home after an evening out. We feel this petition can work to ensure that venues of all sizes in Swansea have the support they need to thrive, develop and most importantly allow audiences to engage with and readily access new and emerging culture in the region.”
The petition can be found here.