The musician gives £25,000 Mercury Prize to small concert halls

Sam Fender has given the entirety of his twenty-five thousand pound honor winnings to the Music Venues Trust, which functions to save the United Kingdom's independent live music spots.

He was given the cheque on mid-October as his new release People Watching was named the top album of the previous year.

The musician has opted to hand the money over to the Music Venues Trust, in acknowledgment of the essential function grassroots venues had in his initial steps.

"As an artist couldn't be pursuing my current career if it weren't for all the gigs I performed around the region, and beyond, when I was starting out," stated Sam Fender. "These venues are renowned, but they are in difficulty."

Since the start of 2023, more than 150 of these venues have shut down – approximately one-sixth of the entire UK sector.

Over the past year, major artists such as the band Pulp, the group Coldplay, Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran have all backed the trust in its initiatives to help venues survive, by including a modest fee to their admission fees, which supports smaller concert halls.

Fender also joined in, collecting in excess of £100,000 on his 2024 arena tour to help numerous small stages across England, Scotland, and Wales.

The money supported venues that were dealing with possible closure due to issues arising from flooding, blazes and bereavements, as well as licensing issues, legal disputes and noise complaints.

Other venues received financial assistance in modernizing infrastructure and technical equipment that helped musicians and audiences.

"The notion that money from concerts in major spaces backs the smaller venues, where it begins for performers like me, is just sensible," Fender has commented.

The musician is far from the only musician to contribute his honor funds to worthy causes.

In Pulp earned the prize in the year 1996 for their album the album, frontman the singer stated that the act would contribute their winnings to the organization War Child.

During 2002, rapper and singer she split her prize among multiple good causes, like the NSPCC and a charity for Sickle Cell.

"Additionally, I gave a thousand pounds to my local community centre, to their classes, because I practiced gymnastics when I was younger and they lacked better apparatus," the artist shared with the media.

In recent years, Ezra Collective contributed their prize money to the youth organization that developed their band, alongside other grassroots music organisations.

And winners that year the group donated their prize to a multiple sclerosis charity after a close contact was identified with the illness.

"Winning was quite enough," remarked vocalist Small. "The prize was the bonus but we didn't need the cherry, because we had the main prize. So our victory affected somebody else's life."

Recently, the trust shared it had saved several grassroots venues in south-east England, by transferring them to community ownership.

The first in Southampton and The Croft in the city were purchased under the Own Our Venues initiative, which is funded by Arts Council England and enthusiasts who purchase "shares" in the buildings.