photo_cameraTimmy Bjarnebro, Head of Booking at Sweden’s Live at Heart Festival
Industry
Why Grassroots Venues and Showcase Festivals Need Each Other
In this guest commentary for VIP-News, Timmy Bjärnebro, Head of Booking at Sweden’s Live at Heart Festival, responds to a recent column by Music Venue Trust founder Mark Davyd on the importance of protecting grassroots music venues.
In his recent column, Mark Davyd rightly pointed out that headline acts don’t appear out of thin air behind arena stages. They come from a pipeline rooted in grassroots venues. Securing the brick-and-mortar foundations of our music scene is essential — but it only solves the first half of the equation.
Here is my view on how the pipeline actually works:
Step 1 is survival. First and foremost, we must secure the grassroots venues so that a new band actually has a stage to play on a wet Tuesday night. Without local stages, nothing else matters. But let’s look one step further.
Step 2 is progression and export. Once a band has that local stage, how do they get to the next level? How does a talent in Örebro, Manchester, or Bergen break through the noise of algorithm-driven playlists to build a real national or international career?
I believe that the answer lies in the good old showcase festivals.
Showcase festivals are the live industry’s unsung R&D department. Whether it’s multi-venue showcases like Live at Heart, SPOT, by:Larm, or Viva Sounds, these events do the heavy lifting for the wider ecosystem. We curate, take the financial risks, and provide the infrastructure for hundreds of unsigned acts to perform live.
But this system only works on one condition: industry professionals — agents, managers, promoters, and A&Rs — must actually show up, get out of their comfort zone and actively seek out new music live. A showcase festival creates the meeting point, but the industry’s presence is what can turn a gig into a career.
Yet, showcase festivals and independent promoters face the exact same wall as grassroots venues: skyrocketing production costs, rising rents shrinking safety nets. Waiting for governments to act or praying for commercial arena giants to voluntarily hand over their margins is a passive strategy. Commercial actors won`t give money away unless they are forced to.
If we want to save the grassroots, we need to act within the grassroots. We need a "bottom-smart" approach from the ground up.
Imagine building local, community-driven reinvestment models in mid-sized cities everywhere. A simple, voluntary micro-add-on (think $1 or €1) on local event tickets could fund a city-wide organizer cooperative.
A fund like this wouldn’t go to administration — hell no! It would finance shared, professionally equipped, independent venues where local promoters can book risk-taking, breakthrough acts without fear of personal bankruptcy. Depending on how many actors commit, it could fund renting a space, buying a freehold, or upgrading production.
Saving the live music ecosystem isn`t just about preserving four walls, nor is it about begging arena giants for handouts. It`s about ensuring the talent inside those walls can actually move forward.
Grassroots venues and showcase festivals are two sides of the same coin. If we want a thriving live industry ten years from now, we need both: Grassroots venues in every city to nurture the talent, well-attended showcase festivals to export it to the world.