Liveurope seeking to add five additional venues to its ever-growing structure
Music venues across Europe are going through the hardest crisis they have ever faced in recent history. In these unprecedented times, Liveurope, an association of 16 leading European venues, is seeking to grow its membership with a view of offering positive perspectives for the sector and stand in solidarity. In doing so, it reinforces the importance of European cooperation and paves the way for supporting the recovery of the sector.
Established in 2014 with funding from the Creative Europe programme, Liveurope connects top music venues across the continent committed to boosting the circulation of European talent. Through a highly efficient, simple and progressive bonus mechanism, the platform distributes grants to music venues in proportion to the amount of young European artists they book. With a proven path in supporting its current 16 members, the platform is now seeking to add five additional venues to its ever-growing structure to become even more representative of Europe’s geographical diversity and provide positive perspectives for the sector.
Liveurope’s bonus mechanism has been pivotal for venues to strengthen the European dimension of their programming and increase the opportunities available to emerging artists to tour beyond their national borders. As Matjaž Manček, artistic director of Kino Šiška (SI) puts it “Liveurope has changed our programming approaches and gave our audiences access to new acts they might not have discovered otherwise”.
Liveurope also provides an important platform for music venues to exchange among themselves and get closer to different music scenes. “Being part of this tight-knit network gives us open and direct access to like-minded professionals all around Europe with whom we can discuss common challenges and find solutions together. Through the crisis, in particular, this has been a great source of strength to keep us going” comments Inês Henriques from Musicbox (PT).
The crisis will likely further aggravate some of the most prominent challenges faced by the sector, such as the growing market concentration and the decrease in diversity on European live events. A recent report published by the European Commission on market trends and funding gaps for the music sector has highlighted Liveurope as a good example to efficiently allocate EU funding to the sector with a little administrative burden for the stakeholders involved.
“Through Liveurope, we have developed a unique framework to support venues that have had game-changing effects on the European music ecosystem. Our model has the potential to be expanded to support even more venues in the near future and has an even greater impact than it already does” adds Elise Phamgia, Liveurope’s coordinator.
“We are convinced that European collaboration and solidarity has become ever more important if we are to emerge from this crisis” she concludes.
Find the call for associate members here (application deadline February 19th): https://liveurope.eu/are-you-our-next-associate-member-apply-our-call-now
About Liveurope
Liveurope is a one-of-a-kind initiative supporting concert venues in their efforts to promote new European talent. Established in 2014, the platform works as a quality label awarded to live music venues committing to European diversity.
Members of the platform are: A38 (Budapest, Hungary), Ancienne Belgique (Brussels, Belgium), L’Aéronef (Lille, France), Sala Apolo, (Barcelona, Spain), Blå (Oslo, Norway), Debaser (Stockholm, Sweden), FZW (Dortmund, Germany), Kino Šiška, (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Melkweg (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Palác Akropolis (Prague, Czech Republic), Musicbox (Lisbon, Portugal), Rockhal (Esch-Sur-Alzette, Luxembourg), Stodoła (Warsaw, Poland), Santeria Toscana 31 (Milan, Italy), Vega (Copenhagen, Denmark), and Village Underground (London, UK).