Music / event
Government pledges money for community gigs
People are being offered help in putting on gigs as part of a new community music festival, partially funded by the government.
The new ‘Our Big Gig’ initiative is using crowdfunding to get off the ground and has received some government money to kickstart proceedings.
The festivsal will be made up of lots of gigs taking place across the country on the weekend of July 10-12, 2015. These gigs will be crowdfunded on Spacehive.com with the Government offering pledges of £100 to each campaign. There will also be free training to help community groups with crowdfunding and event organising.
is needed now More than ever
Since 2013, over 380,000 people have attended 520 Our Big Gig events which have seen a wide variety of musical activities take place in a range of unusual spaces. From schools to skate parks, beaches to boats, some 8,000 volunteers have organised events for their community across the country.
For 2015, all types of community organisations are being urged to apply to put on an event in their local area and bring together diverse groups of people through music. Be it a sports club, faith group or another, all successful registrations will receive a funding contribution towards their crowd funding campaign and training in crowd funding and event management.
Not for profit arts organisation Superact is working with civic crowd funding platform Spacehive to support at least 100 Our Big Gig events in 2015. Superact will support groups to set up crowd funding campaigns on Spacehive, and the Department of Communities and Local Government will pledge £100 to kick start fundraising campaigns.
Bristol West MP Stephen Williams said: “Our Big Gig has a great track record of not only getting people more involved in their local community but also inspiring those without a background in music to pick up an instrument or sing in public for the first time. This July thousands of people across the country will enjoy a weekend of free musical events and I’d urge everyone to get out and support their great local musical talent.”
For more information, visit www.ourbiggig.co.uk
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