Bristol Music Fund – Roadmap to the Future

The Bristol Music Fund is designed to provide long-term, independent investment into the city’s music sector through a democratically owned, community-led structure. The fund will support activity across four keypillars:

1. Venues – safeguarding and strengthening Bristol’s grassroots music venues

2. Events – supporting local promoters, festivals, and the live event ecosystem

3. Music-Making – enabling the creation, development, and showcasing of original music

4. Foundational Support – investing in the essential infrastructure that underpins the sector, including workforce wellbeing, skills development, and business resilience

In November 2024, Bristol Nights published a feasibility study, A Ticket to The Future, which proposed forming a new Community Benefit Society (CBS) to manage the Fund. This structure was selected by the sector working group following a two-year co-design process.

A CBS is a type of business with a cooperative legal structure, regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which embeds good governance, transparency, and democratic decision making into its operations. Where charitable purposes are pursued, it can also be registered with the Charity Commission.

The CBS will be owned by its members — the Bristol music community — who will have a democratic say in its future direction. Governance recommendations were shaped through workshops, public engagement, and sector consultation. As part of this process, a 2024 city-wide audience survey gathered responses from over 500 local music event attendees. Of those surveyed, 93% said they would be willing to pay a 1% levy on tickets to support reinvestment in Bristol music (A Ticket to the Future, 2024).

If implemented city-wide, the proposed 1% levy on ticket sales could generate between £400,000 – £1 million annually. These funds would be reinvested directly into Bristol music, alongside additional revenue from external grant funding and a future CBS member share offer.

The background

Music is a significant part of the culture and identity of Bristol – with independent music venues forming a vital part of this ecosystem. They are essential for nurturing talent, providing opportunities for artists and performers to hone their craft, and are an important feature of our city centre and high streets as gathering places that bring communities together.

Despite their vital role, grassroots venues face chronic under investment. 78% of Bristol’s music gigs take place in venues under 1,000capacity, yet these smaller spaces generate only 32% of the £42–£70 million that music tickets bring into the city’s economy each year.

This highlights a deep structural imbalance: the smaller independent venues that underpin Bristol’s global music reputation receive a disproportionately small share of the revenue they help generate.

This disconnect is compounded by a lack of access to public funding, precarious business models, and increasing affordability pressures across the sector.

The Bristol Music Fund (BMF) is an innovative response to these challenges.

It proposes a self-sustaining model of long-term support ,funded by a nominal 1% levy on ticket sales. Managed through a new Community Benefit Society (CBS), the fund will enable strategic reinvestment into the ecosystem – supporting venues, music-making, and foundational industry infrastructure.

This is not a quick fix or a temporary solution; it is a structural intervention designed to embed cultural value locally and sustain Bristol’s music scene for future generations.

While the fund will ultimately be owned and governed by the music sector and its members, the formation of a CBS requires substantial preparatory work, including legal structuring, governance design, and investment in community co-design and engagement. These steps fall outside the current capacity of the sector and necessitate initial leadership from the council, acting as convenor, accountable body, and enabler. Without this stewardship, the conditions for a credible, compliant, and fundable CBS cannot be met.

The Economy and Skills Policy Committee showed unanimous support for the Bristol Music Fund vision and approved our plans with full cross-party support.

This approval is a significant step forward in our plans, as it means we can to continue in the next stage of realising our vision for a self-sustaining funding model that invests in Bristol Music.

Next in our journey is for Bristol Nights to work with our partners across the city and region, to raise the revenue required to deliver our roadmap.

Watch this space.....