This week, we have a guest blog from Lucy Tessier, a music industry professional who is volunteering for Independent Venue Week. Lucy also works with Culture House to help deliver our marketing.
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Every year, Independent Venue Week arrives to rouse us from the dreary depths of January, shining a spotlight on the brilliant venues and cultural scenes uplifting communities across the country, at a time when the music industry would otherwise slip into hibernation.
Taking part for the first time this year, The Culture House’s micro-venue, The Living Room, will mark the occasion by hosting an alternative event for audiences local to Grimsby and Cleethorpes. Established in 2024, this intimate performance hub set out on a mission to connect people from North East Lincolnshire through creativity and bring them ‘closer to culture’.
So, with Independent Venue Week landing across the UK next week, what does taking part in the initiative mean for artists, audiences, and the people who make small spaces like The Living Room possible?
Firstly, without grassroots venues in Grimsby and Cleethorpes – and there’s a few of them – there would be no platform or connection point for performing artists. These spaces play a vital role in connecting artists and audiences at a local level, which is especially important in ‘underserved’ regions. Artist support initiatives such as The Culture House’s Music Meet Up in The Living Room deliver the positive impacts that can happen when people/artists are given a space to come together. While small in scale, these face-to-face opportunities keep the wider creative ecosystem moving; over time, talent is nurtured, confidence is built, and efforts to go beyond their postcode helped along. Without these grassroots, foundational connections and opportunities, the larger cultural landscape simply cannot grow.
The same goes for local spaces like the Docks Academy, a bustling performance and events venue cultivated by Grimsby craft brewery Docks Beers, and Ropery Hall, a buzzing Barton-based hub showcasing a vibrant mix of performing arts – including music, comedy and theatre.
With each event organised, delivered and attended, these venues – often led by local people passionately making a difference in their place – difficult as it is, contribute to a shift in vision, opportunity and reputation.
Like the Living Room, Docks Academy and Ropery Hall are also taking part in Independent Venue Week this year, marking the strongest presence within the initiative Yorkshire and the Humber region has seen, South of the river for many years and presenting a strong, region-wide programme welcoming audiences across the Humber.
Yet the success of these venues isn’t just about bricks, mortar or programming. It rests on the often unseen labour of the people maintaining sound systems, running bars, sweeping sticky floors at the end of the night.
Independent Venue Week actively seeks to recognise and celebrate those at the core of independent spaces, while also encouraging the practical support that keeps them running. The message is simple: show up, buy a ticket, and, if you can, invest in the venue through a drink (of your choice), or any other contribution that directly supports the people and the places behind the music or performance.
In places like Grimsby and Cleethorpes, this work is on a personal level. People know each other – we’re on first-name terms, and there’s a shared understanding that in smaller towns, every cultural opportunity and effort counts. This shared respect fosters connection and a kind of bonding based on a belief that music and culture are something worth showing up for. By working to keep venues open, through fundraising, promotion, being behind the bar, on the door, or at the sound desk, people are doing more than just filling roles; they’re investing in their place and in each other.
So, as we welcome the arrival of Independent Venue Week in our region, it’s important to pause and recognise the impact of independent venues not just during this seven-day celebration, but all year round. In places like ours, where culture is built through care, collaboration and commitment, these spaces prove that meaningful creative life doesn’t only exist in big cities. It grows wherever people are willing to show up, support one another and keep the doors open.
