The Glasshouse is one of the most heavily subsidised arts organisations in Britain. In the Arts Council funding period between 2018 - 2022 the organisation received half of the entire Arts Council Popular Music budget  at a rate of £9,622 per day. We believe this funding requires a level of accountability and involvement for the venue towards the area's music scene, its performers and its grassroots promoters.

We are asking The Glasshouse to support the work of our grassroots music scene and promoters by doing the following:

START A LOCAL PROMOTER FORUM THAT CREATES HIRE OPPORTUNITIES AT GLASSHOUSE
Develop a forum for grassroots promoters at all levels of their careers and from all parts of our region. This forum must make an earnest effort to help use Glasshouse's resources to make grassroots promoters work sustainable and involve agreed goals and targets that the forum suggests. The existence of this forum should significantly reduces the expectations of maximising Glasshouse's profit in dealings with local small businesses.

OFFER LOCAL PROMOTERS DISCOUNT HIRE AS AN EXPECTATION:
Offer the promoters in this forum significant hire discounts on your venues by default - not something people operating in the grassroots music sector are expected to negotiate and that is seen as a favour, but as a duty that you have to those who don’t receive the immense subsidy that Glasshouse historically does. Ensure your Popular Music teams know that this is an expectation and part of what makes you a legitimate part of our music scene, rather than a distant and elitist organisation that smaller promoters need to beg for largesse from.

EXTERNAL GRASSROOTS HIRE FUNDING AND BAR SALES:
Develop a funding reporting mechanism that includes the sale of drinks in any business case for an small scale promoter's external hire. Ensure that your team understands that small promoting businesses profit only from ticket sales whereas your venue has a large potential for other forms of profit and both can be involved in making an event a success.
Write this into the contract terms of any privatised cafe offer you have in the venue, ensuring that you receive accurate sales data that you can use to make a case for subsidising an external hire based on food and drink sales for any given turnout at Hall One and Hall Two.

INCLUDE YOUNG PROGRAMMERS IN THESE DISCOUNTS:
Develop your training scheme for young promoters to involve sharing your team’s resources and the networks of the aforementioned forum. Use this to demonstrate your commitment to building future generations of grassroots musicians and promoters and to make it a realistic prospect that a young person can start a business that hires your venue.

ADD TWO GRASSROOTS LEVEL PROMOTERS AGED UNDER 35 TO THE NORTH MUSIC TRUST BOARD:
Ensure that your board level decisions include people deeply involved in our local music scene.

CREATE A MINIMUM FLOOR FOR LOCAL ARTISTS TO PLAY HALL ONE:
Stop the practice of almost never awarding local artists performance slots at Sage Hall One. Create a target that at least 30% of popular music performances in Hall One have a local performer in the first or second support slot. 

Ensure that the booking agents involved know that this is a condition of your significant Arts Council subsidy and other grants. Agents and managers seek out Glasshouse over other venues, use your leverage to give a platform to local artists and help develop their profile and career.

Report on this in your annual North Music Trust Report. Include it in your five year strategy, reporting on the number of performances that involved a local artist and which were given the most high profile appearances - report on how much of your programming gives a performance opportunity to a local performer each year.

REPORT MERCHANDISE COMMISSIONS ANNUALLY:
In your North Music Trust annual report, include a specific reporting line on the amount made by your institution’s commission charges on performer’s merchandise sales. Help our community to scrutinise the legitimacy of this practice and aim to abandon it entirely within the next two years.