Brixton music venues get relief funds

Brixton’s Hootananny, with £250,000, is among 27 Lambeth institutions to receive a total of more than £5.5m of funding in the first round of Arts Council England’s Culture Recovery Fund grants.

The fund announced a total of £257m for 1,385 organisations in the first round of grants to applications of below £1m.

More grants are expected to be announced soon. Arts Council England plans to distribute a total of £500m of National Lottery funds in grants ranging from £50,000 to £3m.

Off the Cuff next to Herne Hill station gets £100,000 and Pop Brixton gets £220,385. Music Venues Ltd, owners of Electric Brixton, get £623.000.Brixton House theatre (formerly Ovalhouse) gets £250,000. The Columbo Group, owners of Blues Kitchen venues and Phonox, among others, gets £250,000.

Other Lambeth recipients include Streatham Space Project (£95,000) and Clapham’s Omnibus theatre (£172,549). 

The Oval-based Triangle Network, a global network of artists and visual arts organisations that supports professional development and cultural exchange amongst artists, curators and other arts professionals throughout the world, gets £66,000.

Some 50 Hackney-based organisation received a total of just under £9m and 40 Islington organisations a total of just over £9m.

The full list for Lambeth is below

Lambeth recipients of Cultural Relief Fund grants below £1m

The Music Venue Trust (MVT) welcomed the funding, saying it was “a huge step forward in the efforts to reopen every venue safely”.

MVT has been working with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England and said it recognised the efforts of the government, particularly the Secretary of State and the Chancellor, to understand what was required by grassroots music venues and to make it happen.

“Saving our grassroots venue sector requires a massive jigsaw puzzle of efforts, from the smallest local fundraiser by a community desperate to keep its cherished local venue, to the enormous scope of the government’s Cultural Recovery Fund, one of the largest such funds in the world,” said MVT CEO Mark Dayvd.

He said the first round of funding gave MVT, the sector and communities an achievable opportunity to complete the English section of the jigsaw.

MVT’s focus now will be to work with every venue that was ineligible for funding, and any venue that was unsuccessful in its application to the Cultural Relief Fund.

“Our continued mission remains to reopen every venue safely, an aim that, with this support from the government, we are confident is now achievable.”