What a week. What a 10th anniversary. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH.
It’s been an incredible Independent Venue Week this year, with more venues than ever taking part and a long list of unforgettable shows taking place throughout the week.
To everyone who sang their hearts out, played as if to 50,000 people in a 200 cap venue, drove around the country, lugged equipment in and out of venues, set up stages, did sound and lighting, put on a show, bought a ticket, travelled to a venue, danced down the front, bought merch, spent money locally on food, drinks, taxis, public transport – to every single one of you, thank you for celebrating Independent Venue Week and our venue community so brilliantly and making the 10th anniversary a massive success and so much fun.
It goes without saying that this couldn’t have happened without all of you and your commitment and passion to making good things happen.
It also couldn’t have happened without Arts Council England, Creative Scotland and Creative Wales – our incredibly supportive funders.
A special thanks goes to BBC 6 Music and Steve Lamacq for their continued support as our official broadcast partner. It was amazing to see Steve back on tour all week with a bus for the first time since 2020, and to hear continuous mentions of Independent Venue Week and interviews with, and spotlights of, venues across the station throughout the week.
To add to that, our growing work with BBC Introducing has been really joyful, with the BBC 6 music tour featuring entirely BBC introducing acts as supports and a whole host of shows and coverage worked on collaboratively between BBC Introducing, IVW and venues. Underlining the joint spirit of positivity and the will to do something positive even in the face of adversity.
We also want to thank our generous partners in See Tickets, Beavertown, PPL, The Brits Trust Ltd, Marshall, TagMix, Warchild and LoadIn, who see the absolute value of supporting independence within the live music ecology and the vital role that venue owners and operators play within it.
Huge thanks also to IVW’s 10th anniversary Artist Ambassadors Radiohead’s Philip Selway, Beabadoobee, Young Fathers (Scotland) and Adwaith (Wales) for taking to the stage, sharing their stories and shining the spotlight on our amazing community.
Thanks go to our network of reps all around the country who are our eyes and ears in their area to ensure we are reaching everyone and supporting our community in the best way possible. We’re also grateful to our volunteers who’ve helped ensure we support our venues on the night and across the week.
We were so happy to travel across the country, in person, visiting venues, discovering some amazing live music and connecting, in person with communities who we are getting to know, more and more each year. More than 300 authentic, independent venues took part in IVW 2023, more than ever before – it’s heart-warming that against such a sustained and challenging backdrop, venues can see and feel the value in being part of a positive celebration for their teams, their communities and the music industry.
We had some fantastic activity from our Independent Venue Community happen across the week and we’ll be sharing more of those stories in due course.
Venues up and down the country create the most memorable nights of the past and present – please do continue to support them year round so they can continue to do the same for years to come.
Sybil, Joe, Sam, Erin, Liv and all of our reps x
