In recent years some of Sheffield’s music venues have had to close their doors with places like The Boardwalk and The Plug being two of the venues that are no longer open it has left some music fans scared of more closures.
The Boardwalk closed in 2010 and since then more places have followed suit, the Boardwalk is probably a well known name for any Artic Monkeys fans as it is the venue where they played their first ever gig.
The closure of some of these places has been the building of residential areas leading to noise complaints some people fear that this will cause many more venues to shut down, however, this is not the only reason for venues closing, Joseph Food, editor at Exposed magazine, said “people can get their music from anywhere you know people sit at home they can stream their music now and watch gigs on YouTube” showing how digital growth could be partly to blame for the closure of some venues especially smaller venues.
Food goes on to say “It’s worrying I think it’s one of the reasons why we push music so much is because we want there to be a vibrant scene in Sheffield and we know the talent is there and what will happen is eventually artists will just go to Leeds or Manchester or London” Showing how if these venues continue to close it will be difficult to keep the vibrant and diverse scene that Sheffield has as businesses will start to loose money leaving only bigger venues.
The closure of smaller venues will have a big impact on up and coming artists as they tend to get their start in small venues before moving up to medium venues where they can really start to build an audience but without the smaller venues getting that first gig would become increasingly more difficult which would negatively impact the talent heard from Sheffield as these small bands would be difficult to find online.
The idea of bands and artists going to bigger cities within the UK is already a reality as can be seen in the decrease of bigger artists holding show or gig in the steel city and instead going to neighbouring cities like Leeds and Manchester because they are more likely to get a bigger audience in these areas however this means that many venues will have less money coming in and they could very easily begin to struggle and maybe even have to close down.
The music and art scene makes Sheffield such a beautiful and busy place with the city centres streets littered with street art and sounds of gigs from many different places it would be a shame for Sheffield to loose this but the likely hood of it being loss is growing, which is why it is important for people to go out and support their local venues in any way they can and who knows, you might end up seeing the first gig of the next international phenomenon.
Tierney Maris- FMP 