The Music Venue Trust has announced that Sunbird Records in Darwen, Lancashire has gone out of business, accusing the wider music industry of “sitting on their hands doing nothing” to save such “vital” spaces that are struggling.
The grassroots music venue was one of those that the organisation was attempting to buy through its Own Our Venues project.
“It is with deep sadness that we have to announce that Sunbird Records in Darwen has had to cease trading and is consulting with liquidators”, says the MVT statement.
The venue was originally launched by Jonathan Lindley in 2016. He sadly died last year and, since then, the MVT continues, “the local community he left behind has been doing everything it can to try and keep Jonathan’s legacy alive, and Music Venue Trust has been supporting their efforts to try and make Sunbird Records sustainable and viable”.
However, it goes on, “the economic conditions are just too hard. The cost of keeping this venue alive simply cannot be met from the activities it stages. Sunbird Records is a classic example of what the MVT annual report lays out; a grassroots music venue that is absolutely essential to its local community, does everything that the music industry desperately needs it to do, but simply cannot make ends meet”.
In that annual report published last month, the MVT explained that falling audience numbers and rising costs in the wake of the COVID-caused shutdowns are leaving small venues “operating on razor thin margins” and often “struggling to survive”.
An additional frustration is that Sunbird Records was one of the nine venues which the Music Venue Trust has been attempting to buy the freehold of through its Own Our Venues campaign. Launched in May last year, the aim was to raise £3.5 million through crowdfunding and other investment by the end of 2022. Although a significant amount has been raised, that target is yet to be reached, with the closing date for crowdfunding now extended to the end of March.
“We are incredibly sad that we have not been able to save Sunbird Records”, says MVT in its new statement. “We are still working out what we do now; the Own Our Venues project has raised 50% of the capital it needs to start buying spaces. Maybe we can find a way to buy this building and support the local community to create a new operating organisation that can bring music back to Darwen”.
“It’s incredibly hard to bring a venue back when it closes, it’s one of the reasons we fight as hard as we can to stop it happening”, it adds. “We honestly don’t know. We know that the will among the local community is there and we will do everything we can to try to make it happen”.
The organisation then goes on to blame complacency at the upper end of the live music industry for the current plight of small venues, where many of tomorrow’s big names will learn their craft and find an initial fanbase.
“It is painfully ridiculous that Sunbird Records is closing, unable to afford to pay the bill to keep the lights on, in an industry that is turning over more than £5 billion a year”, it says. “An industry that is planning to open eight new arenas, but cannot find a way to raise the £10,000 to £20,000 a year it needs to keep a vital space like Sunbird open”.
“An industry that is paying its top executives multi-million pound sums while the absolutely essential building blocks it needs to keep bringing that money in simply evaporates beneath it, uncared for and ignored. It’s not good enough and it has to change. If our music industry cannot find a way to keep the lights on at Sunbird Records then it isn’t fit for purpose”.
“Grassroots music venues are closing at the rate of one a week and too many companies and individuals in the wider music industry are sitting on their hands doing nothing”, it concludes. “We have to do better than this”.
Shortly after the Music Venue Trust posted its statement, Jonathan Lindley’s son Steven posted a comment saying that “interest has now been shown in taking over and reopening Sunbird by some of Jonathan’s original collaborators”.
As MVT notes in its statement, this can be a tough task once a venue has already fallen into administration. However, it does provide one more piece of hope for the venue before it is lost for good.
In the meantime, you can find out more about the Own Our Venues campaign here.