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WHAT THE MUSIC VENUE TRUST’S 2025 REPORT TELLS US ABOUT GRASSROOTS MUSIC AND WHY INVOLVING MUSIC EXISTS FOR THIS MOMENT

Jan 2026 by Darren Branch

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Energetic live concert scene at Exeter Lemon Grove with drummer on stage and warm yellow lighting illuminating the crowd.

Grassroots venues build music culture yet remain fragile, demanding collective action now.

Music Venue Trust's 2025 Annual Report

If you want to understand where British music really comes from, you don’t start with arenas or charts. You start with rooms.

You know the ones. The small ones, the sometimes awkward ones. Rooms with low ceilings, sticky floors and PA systems that have seen better days (but give out the BEST sounds). Rooms where bands cut their teeth, audiences find something new and people come together for the love of music!

The Music Venue Trust’s 2025 Annual Report is, at its heart, a reminder that these rooms are still doing the heavy lifting and that they are still under threat.

For anyone working around grassroots music, the findings won’t be shocking. But seeing the numbers laid out, year after year, sharpens the question:

If grassroots venues are the foundation of the entire ecosystem, why are they still the most precarious part of it?

For the team at Involving Music, we also ask:

What role can we play in response?

In 2025 alone, Music Venue Trust handled 205 emergency response cases. These weren’t abstract issues. They were planning disputes, financial collapses, licensing pressures, noise complaints and tenancy problems; the day-to-day realities of running a grassroots venue in the UK.

Across the network:

▸ 95,696 ticketed live music events took place

▸Grassroots venues welcomed over 21.6 million audience visits

▸Yet the average profit margin sat at just 2.5%

That margin tells its own story. Grassroots venues are operating on a survivalist basis, even while contributing £558 million to the wider economy.

Grassroots venues are firmly part of national cultural conversations and so they should be. The idea that larger commercial players should contribute back into the grassroots pipeline has shifted from campaign demand to accepted policy direction. This matters as it reframes the conversation from rescue to responsibility.

However, we all know that policy alone doesn’t keep doors open or the front barrier filled.

The missing middle: between artist and venue

One of the quieter truths in the MVT report is that venues and artists are under pressure in the same places, at the same time. Rising costs hit venues and touring costs hit artists. Promoters are at risk. What’s often missing is sustained, independent storytelling that connects all of this into something legible at a local level.

Venues need more than protection. They need people to understand what happens inside them. Just as artists don’t just need gigs, they need context, progression, and visibility that doesn’t disappear when an algorithm shifts. This is the gap Involving Music exists to fill.

The report shows that over 40% of UK grassroots venues were excluded from major tour routing last year. That isn’t just a touring issue — it’s a cultural one.

If new artists stop passing through local rooms, audiences disconnect. If venues stop being seen as active cultural spaces, they become easier to overlook in planning decisions, funding conversations and public imagination.

At Involving Music, we treat visibility as part of the infrastructure.

Artist Spotlights, Venue Features, community reviews, gig documentation. Content that isn’t just for content’s sake. We create records of cultural activity. Proof that something is happening, here, now, in real rooms with real people.

  • Black and white photo of a shirtless performer on crowd’s shoulders, fans reaching out, intense moment at a packed concert.
    Photo Credit: The Great Hall
  • Bright, modern café with large windows, wooden floors, tables, chairs, and vinyl records on shelves by the wall.
    Photo Credit: 12 Bar Music & Social
  • Outside Exeter Cavern, posters advertise upcoming indie shows, inviting passersby into this historic venue hidden within the heart of Exeter.
    Photo Credit: Chelsea Branch
  • Exterior of Exeter Phoenix arts venue at night, illuminated orange and purple lighting highlights grand entrance and architectural details.'
    Photo Credit: Chelsea Branch & Georgia Niblett-Pharaoh

Independent Venue Week and why this matters right now

This week also marks Independent Venue Week, a national celebration of the rooms that underpin the entire live music ecosystem.

It’s the perfect moment to pause and recognise that venues don’t survive on nostalgia alone. They need audiences turning up, artists passing through and communities continuing to care.

They also survive when their work is seen, documented and valued beyond the night itself.

Why venues should be part of Involving Music

Involving Music isn’t a ticketing platform or a listings site.  And it isn’t trying to replace what venues already do. We exist as connectors.

We are a place where venues can be featured, contextualised and properly represented. Where their history, programming and contribution to local culture is visible in a way that lasts.

If you run or work with a grassroots venue in the South West, we’d love to hear from you.

Being part of the Involving Music platform helps ensure the rooms doing the real work of music culture are not hanging on by a thread. We want you seen, heard and remembered.

Because these rooms matter. And while they’re still standing, their stories deserve to be told.

It’s time to fill your room and find your sound. To become the go-to destination for the South West’s best talent.

Joining the Involving Music network connects you directly with serious local artists and audiences looking for their next night out. Plus, hosting Spotlight Artists makes your nights eligible for our editorial gig reviews, giving you press coverage that national listings just can’t match.

TURN YOUR STAGE INTO A PRESS MAGNET

Here is how the Involving Music ecosystem works for you: We only review gigs that feature Spotlight artists.

By joining the network and booking Spotlight talent, you activate a virtuous loop. When we review the artist, we are reviewing the night, and that puts your venue in the press. It’s editorial validation that you can share with stakeholders, agents, and audiences to prove your venue is the place where things happen

LIST YOUR VENUE

Gareth Davie and band performing on stage with guitars and brass, vibrant spotlights, audience silhouettes in foreground.

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– Darren Branch

Darren Branch’s first love was Heavy Metal, sparked by seeing Iron Maiden live at the Cornwall Coliseum in 1984 at the age of 13. His passion for grassroots music grew after discovering the vibrant local scene around Daylight Recording Studios in Honiton during the late 1980s. Having lived in Honiton and Exeter, Darren now lives in South Somerset and enjoys spending time in South Carolina. He stays deeply connected to the Southwest’s emerging bands—often through families that keep the scene alive. Outside music, he builds websites, reads business books, and participates in English Premier League Fantasy Football.

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