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The 1975 frontman Matty Healy has warned of a philharmonic "silence" that would travel without the pubs and bars that springiness UK artists their archetypal accidental to perform.
Fresh from headlining Glastonbury in June, Healy is backing a caller UK-wide festival which volition spot much than 2,000 gigs taking spot crossed much than 1,000 "seed" venues successful September.
The Seed Sounds Weekender aims to observe the hospitality assemblage hosting bands and singers conscionable arsenic they are starting retired - and for some, earlier they spell connected to go planetary superstars.
Healy, who is an ambassador for the event, said successful a connection to Sky News: "Local venues aren't conscionable wherever bands chopped their teeth, they're the instauration of immoderate existent culture.
"Without them, you don't get The Smiths, Amy Winehouse, oregon The 1975. You get silence."
Oasis, presently making headlines acknowledgment to their sold-out reunion tour, archetypal played astatine Manchester's Boardwalk club, which closed successful 1999, and famously went connected to play stadiums and their immense Knebworth gigs wrong the abstraction of a fewer years.
GigPig, the unrecorded euphony marketplace down Seed Sounds, says the effect assemblage collectively hosts much than 3 cardinal gigs annually, supports much than 43,000 progressive musicians, and contributes an estimated £2.4bn to the UK economy.
"The erosion of backing for effect and grassroots spaces is portion of a wider wide inclination to portion distant the socially antiauthoritarian infrastructure that really makes creation possible," said Healy.
"What's near is simply a taste system wherever lone the privileged tin spend to create, and wherever lone instantly profitable creation survives."
He described the Seed Sounds Weekender arsenic "a captious reminder that euphony doesn't commencement successful boardrooms oregon large arenas - it starts successful backmost rooms, pubs, basements, and autarkic spaces tally connected love, grit, and content successful thing bigger."
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The value of backing for grassroots venues has been highlighted successful the past fewer years, with much than 200 closing oregon stopping unrecorded euphony successful 2023 and 2024, according to the Music Venue Trust. Sheffield's well-known Leadmill venue saw its past gig successful its existent signifier successful June, aft losing a long-running eviction battle.
In May, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced the £85m Creative Foundations Fund to enactment arts venues crossed England.
And past year, the Culture, Media and Sport Committee called for a levy connected tickets to ample concerts astatine stadiums and arenas to assistance money grassroots venues, which artists including Coldplay and Katy Perry, and venues including the Royal Albert Hall, person backed.
But astir effect venues - the smaller spaces successful the hospitality assemblage that supply a level earlier artists get to ticketed grassroots gigs oregon bigger stages - won't suffice for the levy. GigPig is moving to alteration this by formalising the effect euphony venue abstraction arsenic a recognised category.
"The UK's effect venues are wherever euphony careers are born," said GigPig co-founder Kit Muir-Rogers. "Collectively, this abstraction promotes much euphony than immoderate different successful the unrecorded euphony business, yet it has gone overlooked and under-appreciated."
The Seed Sounds Weekender takes spot from 26-28 September and volition spouse with Uber to springiness attendees discounted rides to and from venues.
Tickets for astir of the gigs volition beryllium free, with events taking spot crossed 20 UK towns and cities including London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Leicester, Newcastle and Southampton
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