SAVE OUR VENUES
Music Venues Trust boss Mark Davyd didn’t expect to be fighting for an entire industry’s life in 2020.
Mark Davyd didn’t do too well at school and admits he has no musical talent at all, but at an early age he realised he had the ability to make things happen. Combined with his love for live music, that led him to becoming a local venue operator. Six years ago he helped launch the Music Venue Trust charity, which supports the UK’s small pubs and clubs. Very suddenly, in March 2020, the trust became the focus of the industry’s fight to survive the coronavirus lockdown, and Davyd helped launch the Save Our Venues campaign.
“Most of our time is taken up organising the sector, writing briefings for the government, cultural sector and music industry and dealing with specific threats of closure,” he says. “In 2019, we dealt with 96 cases where a venue was under threat of closure, and prevented that outcome in all 96 cases. Instead of the 100 cases of possible closure we predicted we would deal with in 2020, we now have 556 in the next three months.”
Davyd has overseen the establishment of a network of “lawyers, licensing officers, planners, developers, acousticians” and others who are working to save venues and thousands of associated jobs. He describes his position as “positive but realistic,” arguing that the campaign’s biggest enemies are “uncertainty, negativity and speculation.”
“With everyone’s support we can emerge from this crisis with the touring circuit intact and artists and audiences back out doing what they love doing in the spaces they love to do it in,” he predicts. “Everyone we can sign up to the mission makes it more likely we will succeed.”
It’s more than just business to Davyd. “Every great story I have relates to music, and those moments revolve around the people I met in, or the times I spent, in a grassroots music venue,” he states. “It’s about the people you meet, the experiences you have, and the shared time. Running a music venue found me a lifelong partner, gave me two kids. The people in these venues are my extended family. I literally can’t imagine not having that in the future.” MK
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