New Grant Funding For Venues To Boost Sydney's Live Music Scene

The City Of Sydney is set to offer grant funding and streamlined planning for live music venues throughout the city in an attempt to encourage more venues to host gigs and give locals more options for a night out. 

The new grant programs will be dedicated to new and existing live music venues, live music programming, night time safety initiatives and other projects with a focus on boosting Sydney's night time economy. 

Lord Mayor Clover Moore said the City is committed to support local venues and artists, in line with its Live Music and Performance Action Plan, established in 2014.

"Sydney has a strong community of artists, performers and musicians, with fantastic venues run by extremely dedicated people, and a wonderful and increasingly vocal community of fans," Moore said.
 
"Live music is hugely important to Sydney, with recent research commissioned by the City identifying its value to the community at $353 million during last year alone.
 
"We're using every lever at our disposal to encourage more live music and performance, reduce unnecessary red tape and advocate for the regulatory reform needed for a strong and successful live music and performance sector."

In addition to the announcement of the new grant funding, the City Of Sydney has also outlined a number of other initiatives that have been delivered or are currently underway, including: 

• A review of the City's busking policy to further encourage and support busking and street performance
• $2.77 million in small grants (each under $100,000) to live music and performance projects since July 2014
• One-on-one support to over 150 live music and performance businesses and organisations
• Matched funding for venues to access acoustic advice
• Free rehearsal spaces for students, with more than 1,800 bookings across more than 30 City-owned venues
• Access to affordable recording facilities at Redfern Community Centre
• Housing for eight musicians and performers in City owned live/work spaces
• Annual Business 101 seminars targeted to the live music industry
• ‘Amplify’, a targeted live music programming advisory service for businesses, in partnership with the Live Music Office, MusicNSW and Inner West Council
• Funding for all ages events, in partnership with MusicNSW
• More than 1900 free event listings of live music and performances of the City's What's On website since its launch in September 2015
• Industry development forums to facilitate the establishment of a live music industry business chamber
• Research into the value of live music in the City of Sydney local government area, which found live music contributed $353 million to the local community in 2016 alone.

For more details, click here.