#SaveOurVenues - The Gallery @ Creative Arts

'The Gallery @ Creative Arts Burnley' is part of a national initiative launched by Music Venue Trust to prevent the closure of hundreds of independent music venues. 

Our venue faces closure because despite running successful events over the last 6 months we are still in our infancy. This has meant due to the Covid - 19 Crisis our bid to the arts council can no longer be submitted after spending months working on a solid and concise application. The arts council have been forced to reallocate the grass roots music funds to keep open venues that they already support.

Because of the popularity of our events, and the encouragement we have received from the public, artists, college's, artistic organisations and Burnley Council we believed before lockdown that the demand and will to support 'The Gallery' would stimulate it financially. This in turn encouraged us to invest further into the business. After fully renovating the venue, and hosting successful events we decided to upgrade our bar facilites and renovated our beer cellar as well as starting to build on our sound equipment for a superior live music experience. This was in strong belief that our growth alongside upcoming events would help pay for the upgrades and other much needed items. Obviously and unfortunately this has not been the case due to the current global pandemic with regards to social distancing measures in place for COVID 19. In turn this has led to mounting debts, insecurity within the sector and financial shortfalls for planned projects. These projects would have provided many paid opportunities for local artists, and creatives rising from low cost ticket/event sales to the public, promoting access to arts in an already limited area that has lost its once bursting musical value. 

Your donations will be used to continue the good work we started before lockdown. We have so many brilliant and artistic people ready to make our venue the creative hub people of Burnley are crying out for and deserve. Projects which we are working on and need to support are :-

• 'The Platform Project' now in its online adaptation 'The Quarantine Project' - created to showcase and reach out to the areas best original bands/musicians by celebrating live performance in an attempt to bring back our live music scene. We have also been providing any local artists a stage to reach their audience in the community, a space to create and perform. From dance to comedy and more.

• The I'mpossible Choir lead by musician and music teacher Chris Bridges - Another key community project due to begin at 'The Gallery' now also adapted to an online event.

All of our venues projects support the local music industry with a community driven interest. We strongly believe music, and the arts, is vitally important for mental wellbeing. We want to be able to keep doing what we are doing and providing opportunity for developing and nurturing talent in our community.

 In order to do this we urgently need financial stimulation to safeguard our venue and the investments we have already made.

If we hit our target, and we can prevent the closure of our venue, everything above the amount we need will be donated to the Music Venue Trust GMV Crisis Fund to protect other venues just like ours, right across the country.