On Thursday 28 January at 8pm Gig Buddies with Thera Trust are hosting an online panel for Independent Venue Week 2021(IVW). ‘Access All Areas’ aims to discuss what it means for a venue to be accessible for punters and players. In the lead up to this event we wanted to share some our previous collaborations with Independent Venue Week.
It’s been almost exactly a year since Gig Buddies Glasgow held our official Launch Gig in Partnership with Independent Venue Week and the Glad Café on 31st January 2020, and what a year it’s been! In retrospect, I feel even luckier to have been a part of IVW 2020 than I felt at the time.
Partnering with IVW for our launch gig was really valuable for the then-brand-new Glasgow branch of Gig Buddies. IVW put us in touch with the Glad Café, and their generosity meant that we had the opportunity to put on a gig in a well-known mainstream Glasgow venue. The line-up (the Sensatronics, Blue Grisha, and singer-songwriters from Paragon Music’s Horizons project) featured disabled and non-disabled performers alike. Our audience was similarly diverse, with local people who were just there to see some music as well as Gig Buddies members and volunteers.
Both the musicians who took part and the audience had positive things to say about the night. Andrew Pettigrew, drummer and songwriter for Blue Grisha, said,
We really enjoyed the concert at the Glad Café. It was really well-organised and everyone there were supportive and encouraging. The sound engineering was also amazing, and the atmosphere in general was awesome. We’ve all agreed that it was our favourite experience playing live as Blue Grisha so far, and we’re extremely grateful we had this great opportunity.
Gig Buddies Glasgow member Kirsty also had a positive experience,
I had a great time at the Gig Buddies Launch. I got to meet the Gig buddies team and I even knew some of the people from Paragon who were playing.
Independent Venue Week have shown commitment to making live music accessible to everyone, and we’ve been really lucky to be able to work toward this common goal with them. We’re excited to facilitate next week’s ‘Access All Areas’ panel discussion, featuring speakers from Drake Music Scotland, Attitude is Everything, and Sneaky Pete’s. We wish we could be out at real, live gigs at local independent venues next week, but we’ll just have to party extra hard for IVW 2022!
We have more information about our past collaborations with IVW coming soon.