Liveline Fund: MVT, SOS and AIP open a new window for British grassroots

On 22 July 2026, three UK-based independent venue promoters and advocates for venues launch a fund dedicated to touring and regular programming for grassroots venues.

The Music Venue Trust (MVT), Save Our Scene (SOS) and the Association of Independent Promoters (AIP) launched a new support scheme for the British grassroots music scene on July 21, 2026: the Liveline Fund. Mixmag relayed the announcement the following day, and the fund's official website - livelinefund.uk - confirms the triple governance. The scheme aims to finance live concerts, artist tours and regular programming of independent venues.

The initiative comes at a time of restructuring for the sector across the Channel. It extends, on an associative scale, the logic that had presided over the unveiling by the British government in early July 2026 of a 45 million pound Music Plan aimed at funding more than 2,000 projects over three years (announced on July 14, 2026, DJ Mag). While the state plan sets the broad outlines, the Liveline Fund goes down to the grassroots level: venues, promoters, touring artists.

The trio of organizations is significant. The Music Venue Trust is the historic actor in the defense of British grassroots venues - these 100 to 500-seat venues that, since the jungle and rave years, have served as a laboratory for the scene. The Association of Independent Promoters, on the other hand, carries the voice of independent programmers, often on the front lines facing rising operating costs and the gradual disappearance of the regional touring circuit. Save Our Scene, founded by George Fleming during the Covid lockdown to defend British live music, completes the picture and continues in this continuity of mobilization.

For the British drum & bass and jungle scene, the stakes are direct. The circuits that carry the culture today - from Bristol to Manchester via Leeds - rely very largely on this network of medium-sized venues and independent promoters. It is there that the DJs and producers of the current generation have been formed, just as their elders had been formed over the previous three decades.

The precise eligibility criteria, the amounts allocated per beneficiary and the calendar for the opening of applications are detailed on the portal livelinefund.uk. To follow: how this fund will articulate with the government's Music Plan, and the place that will be given to underground aesthetics in the selected files.