Why the UK's grassroots venues and projects need saving (2025)

The fight to save the UK’s grassroots scene has intensified over the years, but the urgency was perhaps most pressing at this year’s Brit Awards. Across most winners, the stage was used as a pitchfork to draw awareness to the issue we’re currently facing and how it falls on the shoulders of those at the top to help. As The Last Dinner Party said after winning ‘Best New Artist’: “[Venues] are the lifeblood of the music industry, and they are dying.”

We all know why we’re losing many of our grassroots venues, but what’s perhaps becoming somewhat misconstrued in the haze of endless discourse is why, exactly, that is a bad thing and what it means for the other corners of the low-level infrastructure. Obviously, removing independent venues implies taking away stages—literally—for unknown and rising artists to shine and develop, but it also hints at something potentially more insidious, something that could entirely dismantle the entire country’s music industry.

For decades, the industry has fostered an unknown pipeline between the start and finishing line, paving invisible hurdles for artists—artists like The Last Dinner Party, Ezra Collective, Myles Smith, and many others who adorned the stage at this year’s Brits—and allowing them to reach certain milestones from the bottom up. It’s not a perfect model—it never has been—but this flourish begins with grassroots opportunities.

“How many more venues need to close, how many music programs need to be cut before we realise that we can’t just celebrate success, we have to protect the foundations that make it?” Smith opined on stage at the ceremony, adding to the handful of names that used the platform to push the government into action. Incidentally, this is also the line fired by Ed Sheeran’s latest push to convince the prime minister that his attention is needed now more than ever.

In an open letter, the singer rallied backing from several big industry names to request a £250m UK music education package to “repair decades of dismantling music”. In it, he highlighted how last year was the first year in over 20 years that the country didn’t have a UK global top 10 single or album in the charts. This is a worrisome observation, considering the UK’s monopoly when it comes to the cultural impact of its own localised musical hub.

All of these fractures pose a significant risk to the pipelines that allow artist to graduate from dreamers to award-winners, with independent venues and accompanying grassroots initiatives at risk of falling by the wayside entirely, removing a pivotal step in the development of emerging talent. By weakening the system, these voices will find no avenue for breaking through, dissolving the pathway to recognition.

Youth Music, the young people’s music charity that helped launch the career of Ezra Collective, is acutely aware of these risks, recognising that the issue extends beyond just grassroots venues to include vital initiatives that give artists a chance to build sustainable careers in the music industry. Worse still, Youth Music found that many similar grassroots projects are at risk of closure—41 per cent—putting around 260,000 young people at risk of missing out on their chance at a future Brit Award.

Speaking to Far Out, Youth Music CEO Matt Griffiths notes that this issue spans far deeper than we perhaps thought, needing a full re-evaluation of the holistic support needed to rectify it. “Grassroots music venues are the heartbeat of our music scene,” says Griffiths. “They are places where so many incredible artists have made their start and provide young people with vital opportunities and a safe environment to perform or develop skills backstage.”

However, he adds how “the problem is bigger than that”, saying, “It’s time to look beyond the buildings and start focusing on the people that fill them. If we don’t increase funding for grassroots music projects, then there will be no artists to play these venues in ten years’ time.” Youth Music’s project—the Music Rescue the Roots initiative—looks to raise funding for the young people at a loss in the current scramble to find the right support, tackling the inevitability of “a decrease in representation of people from diverse backgrounds in the industry and at awards shows.”

Without these projects, acts like Ezra Collective and English Teacher likely wouldn’t have been able to find their footing or even find themselves at such award shows to celebrate their talent and achievements. “Grassroots projects are key when it comes to tackling inequalities and equalising young people’s access to the music industries,” says Griffiths, noting the difficulties such artists would have encountered without such programs.

This points to a broader, more ingrained issue, where artists from less privileged backgrounds lose opportunities, and those with support from day one are able to navigate the industry with greater ease and financial stability. “With funding cuts to music and the arts in schools, with youth clubs almost non-existent, these projects can provide the only gateway for young people, meaning that the music industry is slowly becoming a playground exclusively for the well-off,” says Griffiths, supporting his point by drawing attention to a 2024 Labour study that found that nearly half of those nominated for major awards, including the Brits, were from privately educated backgrounds.

“We need these projects so that young people have a place to explore their passions, feel part of a community, express how they’re feeling and hone their crafts, no matter their background,” he continues, adding, “And crucially, to feed the pipeline with brilliant and diverse talent that will help us maintain our heritage as a nation of outstanding musical exports.” While awareness is a huge step in addressing the issue, or at least sparking the appropriate conversations to incite action, according to Griffiths, it’s all about funding.

That’s why the Rescue the Roots campaign is a crucial effort to safeguard the future of the UK music industry—and why artists like Ed Sheeran and his peers are rallying together to take action while it still matters. It’s also why smaller artists, like Myles Smith, are using their growing platforms to advocate for change despite having more to lose. And above all, it’s why grassroots venues, music charities, and industry leaders must unite to protect the spaces that nurture the next generation of talent before it’s too late, especially when government support is nowhere to be seen.

After all, if we lose grip now, it’s clear where things are heading. In five or even ten years’ time, when most of these venues and initiatives have faltered due to lack of substantial intervention or government disregard, the UK’s independent music scene could be gone, and acts we desperately need might not exist at all, let alone win at the biggest music awards event in the country. As Griffiths puts it: “The time for change is now.”

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