Frank Turner champions grassroots music across London and beyond.

Frank Turner champions grassroots music across London and beyond.

‘I have a very high chance of developing leukaemia.’

She’s relocated there with her young family.

If there’s anyone who knows the importance of grassroots venues to London’s music ecosystem, it’s Apple Music DJ Matt Wilkinson.

The industry tastemaker firmly embedded himself in the London scene as a former new music editor at NME before bringing you the best emerging acts around over the airwaves on his daily radio show.

And by night, you’ll often find him at one of the capital’s many gig spots unearthing the next Fontaines DC, Charlie XCX or Lola Young.

‘We have such an incredible influx of culture coming in and one of the obvious funnels out is music and performing arts’, Matt tells Metro.

‘You get different people heading to London – some of them not through choice, some of them because it’s London and because it’s got this history.  When you throw it all together, you just need small venues to be able to give these artists their start.

‘It’s impossible for an artist to make good music and suddenly go from playing to nobody to selling out Brixton Academy in front of 5,000 people.  You need those middle ground venues where you can play to 50 people, then 100 people, then 250, then a 1,000, then 2,000.  It’s important to have that kind of stepping stone or that ladder that small venues provide.

‘They’re the lifeblood.  Not just of London music but the city itself.  It’s not just music venues, but comedy venues, theatres, and independent cinemas.’

This week, Metro along with the London Mayor’s Office, TfL, MVT, the Featured Artist Coalition and London Creates Music, launched the London Creates MUSIC campaign at the Outernet in Denmark Street highlighting the importance of London’s grassroots music venues and its musical heritage.

The map will be screened for a month at the Outernet London, the largest digital exhibition space in Europe.

The focal point is a captivating alternative Tube map guiding readers through the city’s many live venues, artists you need to see in 2025, record shops, historic locations, and independent labels.

Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden, Skin from Skunk Anansie, Billy Bragg, Charlie Steen from Shame and Prima Queen are among the acts who have backed the campaign and given their views on the importance of a thriving grassroots scene.

Almost 330,000 performances were held at 179 grassroots music venues in London attended by around 4.3million people last year, according to the Music Venue Trust (MVT).

But the trust’s founder, Mark Davyd, warned the costs of running these venues has ‘absolutely exploded’ over the last five years.

The nighttime economy suffered a further blow on Wednesday after The Leadmill in Sheffield lost its fight against eviction, prompting Liam Gallagher to brand the decision ‘scandalous’.

Matt says councils, the government, and larger venues need to be working together to help smaller venues and preserve the city’s grassroots heritage.

He said: ‘Without smaller venues, you’re not going to be able to grow artists to a point where they can actually go and play the O2 or Brixton Academy, or Hammersmith, or the Forum.  Everybody needs to pull together because it’s really tough.

‘We read about a venue a month having to do a Crowdfunder – basically having to beg to survive.  The future is definitely in a turbulent place thanks to everything that’s happened over the past five years, and probably longer.

‘Now is the point when people need to come together. It almost feels the onus is on music fans to help save venues, which is wrong. It should be the music industry that leads the way.’

Another facet of the campaign is to guide fans on their own musical journey across the capital – reconnecting memories visiting the likes of The Lexington and the Water Rats and making new ones at upcoming shows.

One of Matt’s stand out gig memories was the last show at the Astoria – the iconic live venue on Charing Cross Road that closed its doors in 2009.  Organised by Sam Duckworth from Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly, the event was a riotous affair.

Matt added: ‘After the show, they opened the backstage bit you don’t often get to see as a fan.  Someone came on stage and said “everything’s got to go because they’re knocking the place down”.

‘People were ripping old school telephones out of the wall, taking them as mementos.  I’ve got crazy memories like that. ‘

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Grassroots venues are critical for encouraging and developing the future stars of music; without these spaces, we wouldn’t have the huge icons we know and love today. 

This was the rallying cry from rising stars Prima Queen when they met Metro at London’s Phoenix Arts Club, having just released their debut album, The Prize.

The duo, consisting of best friends Kristin McFadden, 30, and Louise Macphail, 27, are not from London but found a home in the independent scene here in 2017 when they began to carve out their path into the music industry.

‘London’s grassroots venues have done so, so much to help start our career,’ shared Kristin, who is originally from Chicago but moved here for a songwriting course, on which she met Louise.

The Oats singer continued: ‘One of our pivotal shows was playing at Windmill [Brixton], which is one of our favourite venues.

‘We went on our first tour because the sound engineer became a fan from our set, and then told The Big Moon about us, and we got to go on tour with them.’

Now, Prima Queen are following in the Mercury Prize nominees’ footsteps with their own headlining tour this year, visiting independents like London’s Islington Assembly Hall and the iconic Thekla in Louise’s hometown of Bristol. 

Kristin continued: ‘It literally goes back to these grassroots venues, [that’s] how a band can build up from nothing to start making your way into the industry.’

‘You’d never be ready to play the big shows without them,’ Louise agreed. ‘It’s like a training ground, having all these venues around London.

‘Most bands go through a time where you’re just playing one or more every week and making loads and loads of mistakes, and then learning from them.’

Prima Queen have joined the likes of Billy Bragg and Skunk Anansie to voice their support for London’s grassroots scene following the launch of the London Grassroots Music Tube Map.

It’s part of a new campaign that Metro is running alongside the Mayor of London, Transport for London and organisations including the Music Venue Trust, Featured Artist Coalition, Outernet and Universal Music.

The map will be screened for a month at the Outernet London, the largest digital exhibition space in Europe.

The interactive display of the map will be shown in the Arcade space, which links the nightclub to The Lower Third grassroots music venue on Denmark Street.

What sets these smaller venues apart of the sense of community you can feel in them, especially when you work behind the scenes as well as on the stage like Louise.

She worked for the radical art and music space Matchstick Piehouse in Deptford and was there when it tragically shut down at the end of 2023.

The venue was plunged into £36,000 of rent debt after the pandemic, but with the help of the Music Venue Trust and a huge fundraising effort, it has partially re-opened as Piehouse Co-op.

‘The community brought it back,’ Louise said of the space. ’The venues are crumbling, but the community is still there.’

Kristin believes the online focus can distract from that community aspect, explaining: ‘Some people go viral and they have all these followers, but they struggle to fill venues.’

Neither is wrong or right, it’s just totally different. 

‘It’s sad that people are spending more time on their phones and not just going out and seeing who’s down the street.’

This echoes the ‘best bit of advice’ Louise ever got for starting a career in the industry: to just go out and find the music.

‘The way that you become successful is filling up your local venue and having a queue down the street, and then that’s what leads you to the next step,’ she shared before pondering: ‘I wonder now, is that the same advice because it’s so online?’

Prima Queen have recently played one of their biggest ever gigs at Hammersmith’s Eventim Apollo, with a capacity of 5,000 standing.

The contrast between this and their ‘warm up’ show at the independent London venue Omera, with a 320 capacity, didn’t go unnoticed.

‘Obviously it’s fun being on a big stage in front of lots of people,’ said Kristin before Louise, showing how in sync the pair are, finished her sentence and added: ‘But you can’t see their faces.’

That ‘magic’ connection with the audience can get a bit lost, especially when the artist has in-ear headphones for the music, which almost completely mutes the crowd.

‘When you’re playing in smaller venues, you can really have that back and forth with the crowd,’ Louise explained, sharing that their recent smaller gig became an accidental Q&A thanks to the intimacy.

The Eclipse singers would love for larger artists to start doing small gig tours too, bringing their existing fanbase into spaces they may never have seen before.

She added: ‘The people that already care about music venues, really care. We just need more people who maybe aren’t aware of them to be going to those spaces and putting value on them.

Ultimately, responsibility falls on the gig-goers to keep the doors open rather than the artists – if you have nobody buying tickets and drinks, then the space cannot continue to function.

‘This is a space where you can see music for affordable prices,’ Kristin points out, with most venues only charging around £10 to £15 per gig (as opposed to £200).

Rising electricity and daily living costs also impact the venue owners but in the face of the skyrocketing arena and stadium tour prices, going to grassroots venues could be the way forward.

Kristin agreed: ‘We feel so disconnected in society right now for so many reasons, and to have these spaces to come and be seen by our friends, neighbours, and community and feel supported and support other musicians. 

‘I think we forget how important it is to be in those spaces.’

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