The government has announced €50m of support for the commercial live performance sector to assist producers, promoters, venues and musicians.
The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin, said the schemes will help support Ireland’s entertainment industry during ongoing closures due to the crisis.
“This range of measures will assist commercial venues, producers and promoters to do what they do best – make work for audiences – and provide a valuable asset to our society missing culture and entertainment,” Minister Martin said.
“In addition, the new measures support the indispensable bedrock of our music industry assisting businesses, performers, musicians and crew.”
“We as a nation need to continue to see and experience Irish art and this scheme will provide wellbeing benefits to both participants and members of the public through the high quality performances made available online in 2021.
Included in today’s announcement is a significantly enhanced Live Performance Support Scheme (LPSS); a new support for sole traders and music businesses to pay fixed costs; a new capital fund to install recording facilities for live streaming; and a new local performance scheme this summer for villages and town centres.
Following exceptional demand for the pilot LPSS in 2020, a fund of €25m will now be made available for 2021. The scheme will provide significant job opportunities in the live performance sector. It will support the continued production of high quality artistic output, as was demonstrated during the pilot phase of the Live Performance Support Scheme, which recently provided thousands of days of employment to hundreds of musicians, actors, crew and technicians when no other opportunities were available.
Building on those successful outcomes, the Department has gained valuable insights and applied these in the new scheme where appropriate. The objective now is to support employment and wellbeing opportunities in the live performance sector across all genres and continued high quality artistic output for the general public.
Awards will range from €10k upwards.
The Live Performance Support Scheme 2021 will be open for applications from 19th March 2021 until Wednesday 14th April. Further information can be found here.
As a further support measure for those in the live music entertainment industry, the Minister is announcing funding of up to €14m for a new scheme to make a contribution to the overheads of businesses that have been significantly negatively affected by COVID-19 and that do not qualify for other business supports.
