Venue after venue are being destroyed by Property Developers across the country and we wish to highlight our feelings, that this is a plague taking place under our very noses, a plague that is killing the life and blood of the music industry, a plague that if action is not taken NOW we will see the death of the traditional pub venue and potentially have a multi million pound impact on our economy given that this is the starting point for so much UK music talent!!
The latest ‘victim’ could be – if we don’t act now – Cambridge’s ‘legendary’ pub, ‘The Flying Pig’, a sacred music venue we believe, thanks to Pink Floyd’s ‘Crazy Diamond’, Syd Barrett and a pub that sums up the problem outdated planning regulations are having and how if not changed the UK economy could suffer.
Quite Great has spent decades working with musicians, helping them on all levels of their progress through the maze that is the music world and the one thing above all else musicians crave is live venues where the very heartbeat of the location resonates with the pulse of music and that is most certainly summed up by ‘The Flying Pig’. This pub epitomises why we believe new planning laws need to be pushed through Parliament urgently, allowing pubs like this to be given a new ‘protected’ status and goes hand in hand with what has taken place in recent months also within Parliamentary committees and the great work being done by the ‘MUSIC VENUE TRUST’ who have been doing key research into this subject which highlights that 1/3 of small venues – those under 350 capacity – are under threat, now if Glasgow and Bristol are taken as two examples, their combined local impact on the economy from live music comes to just over £200 million and that is ‘only’ the impact on the local economy.
When one starts to see the ‘pub circuit’ as the research and development source for the music industry the problems can be very clear, the more these venues are under threat the more musicians struggle to take their first steps on the ladder of success, the more they get despondent and hence increasing already the mental issues many go through, and hence less talent rises to the surface, leading to fewer artists, fewer venues and more flats being built, so it is a truly vicious circle.
In Cambridge, where we are based we are looking to bring together venues owners, promoters, musicians and local government to look at not just a five year plan but an event that can transform Cambridge yearly, much as does The Great Escape in Brighton, thereby creating a focused.
