Music Venue Properties - the entity set up by the Music Venue Trust as part of its Own Our Venues initiative - has acquired its first venue, The Snug in Atherton, Greater Manchester.
The venue's Managing Director Rachael Flaszczak says: “The Snug being purchased by Music Venue Properties means everything to me, my team and our community, as it allows us to continue to provide this very important space to up and coming artists for many years to come".
"We now feel secure and confident to plan ahead knowing the venue is in safe hands with people that have a shared vision of the future of new music", she adds.
"To be the first of many serves as a light of hope that the preservation of grassroots music venues can be done when people pull together to make things happen, and The Snug can keep showcasing the cultural life within our community".
The Music Venue Trust launched its Own Our Venues initiative in May 2022. MVP was established as a charitable community benefit society, and people and companies were encouraged to invest in that entity so that it could buy the freeholds of a network of grassroots music venues. That would mean those venues have a landlord that exists to support the music community, providing more long-term security.
MVP confirmed yesterday that it has now "secured the freehold of the building occupied by The Snug and has placed it into permanent protected status”.
“The venue’s current operators have signed a ‘cultural lease’”, it added, “which is an innovative agreement specifically created by MVP to guarantee that, as long as The Snug operates as a space for grassroots live music for their local community, they can enjoy the use of the building".
"Alongside the security offered by the new cultural lease", it continued, "The Snug is now directly supported in its ambition to bring music to its local community by a landlord that shares and supports that aim".
Having raised £2,318,210 from 1261 individual investors to finance a pilot scheme, MVP now plans to buy the freeholds on eight more venues, five in England, one in Scotland and two in Wales.