Wirral music venue boss looks to the future

Four years since it started, Future Yard is working out what it does next.

Starting out as a pop-up festival as part of cultural celebrations on the Wirral in 2019, the non-profit music venue based on Argyle Street recently hosted a number of events that drew 2,000 people into Birkenhead over the August bank holiday weekend as part of this year’s Borough of Culture for Wirral.

Future Yard (Image: Madeleine Penfold) When many grassroots concert venues are closing and after a difficult time during the pandemic, Craig Pennington, its director, said Future Yard is booking more and more shows with four gigs a week and things were moving in a good direction.

Christian Lee Hutson performing at Future Yard (Image: Nerys Griffith) In the last year, 26,500 people visited the venue with nearly a third of these from poorer areas while 63% said they would not have visited Birkenhead otherwise.

Alongside shows, the organisation also runs a number of schemes to introduce young people to jobs and skills in the music industry, free tickets, supports young independent artists, and offers performances for children under eight.

Future Yard first got the keys to its current building on Argyle Street in January 2020, just before the pandemic, with an original plan for it to be a pop up venue. While it was challenging, Craig said being able to buy their building was key to their survival as it offers them a long term home unlike 94% of UK grassroots music venues.

Circuit Des Yeux performing at Future Yard (Image: Ryan Devlin) As Wirral Council looks to regenerate Birkenhead, Future Yard is often pointed to as an early example of that. Craig said: “Arts and culture have always been that trojan horse. The first kind of organisations that are doing things in a place. I definitely see us as playing a key role in that

“The first question people asked us when we opened and they ask us a little bit less now is why Birkenhead? Why do it here? It would be so much easier to do it in other parts of the Wirral or Liverpool city centre but for us it always had to be. It’s about bringing change in this part of the world.”

Craig Pennington, Future Yard CIC director (Image: Sam Ryley) He said: “We couldn’t go anywhere else. The first thing we did was put “Birkenhead is the future” in hot pink neon on the building. Birkenhead is us and we are Birkenhead,” adding: “It’s about people feeling pride of where they’re from but also people outside of Birkenhead and Wirral thinking about Birkenhead as a place where music happens, where interesting, left-field, new things happen.”

Since it first started, Future Yard has received significant support from the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority, £1.3m from Wirral Council through a Town Deal grant, and a loan to buy 75 Argyle Street. It receives £150,000 a year from the Arts Council to fund its core work who also gave it  just under £500,000 to create a new 1,200 capacity venue as part of plans to create a new park in the town.

Boston Manor performing at Future Yard (Image: Ryan Devlin) Despite this support, its most recent accounts up to March 2023 showed it operated at a loss of £29,712 that year. Craig said the venue had “come a long way in a short amount of time” and was working towards being less reliant on grant funding.

He added: “There’s a small loss but if you look at arts organisations for that period coming out of Covid, you would find it hard to find any who didn’t. It’s the reality of the sector, we’re very young. If you think about us as a start up, I think a small manageable loss would be expected.”

Asked whether it could have survived without grants, Craig said: “Not in the way that it is, not in the form that it is. It certainly wouldn’t be having the impact that we have if it wasn’t for that. There’s three ways that we earn money. We do the things that music venues traditionally do. We sell tickets, beer and pizza. We have some grant funding relationships that help us meet our overheads and core running costs and then we’ll do some project specific funding.

“That three way mix isn’t how grassroots music venues traditionally operate. It’s much more akin to how theatres, galleries, and traditional arts institutions work. If you look at our business model and you compare that to some of the large culture institutions in Liverpool like the Everyman, Tate, and Fact, it’s similar to that rather than a rock and roll venue.”

Long term, he sees this different approach to the business as being the key to success, adding: “By having those three revenue streams, it means you’re not relying on one.

"Traditionally our sector is much more reliant on grant funding than we are and will be once our business model is fully realised.

“If you look at where we’ll be in three years time, our ticket, food, and beverage sales will make up a much higher percentage of our turnover compared to grant funding.

"We want to have our grant funding percentage at around 12 to 13%. It’s higher than that at the moment but that’s where we’ll be.”

Going forward, Future Yard is looking to help create an arts and culture hub on Argyle Street alongside organisations like Make CIC, develop new artists more, new rehearsal space, outreach into schools, and expanding its skills and training programmes to get more people careers in the music industry.

The venue is also looking to expand into the planned Dock Branch Park, a £15m project to create a new green space through the town centre that will run from Wirral Waters to Green Lane train station eventually. 

As part of this new park, there are plans for “a large-scale, nationally significant live performance space” where Future Yard can host events for up to 1,200 people.

The plans have long been in a pipeline and are currently expected to be delivered by 2027 after some delays. Craig said: “It will take as long as it takes but the luxury that we’ve got is we’re not going anywhere, adding:

“It is a key element to animate that park and connect it to local people and give it cut through regionally and nationally.”

For Craig, he said the arts are key to changing Birkenhead, adding: “It’s about people. Sometimes regeneration visions and ambitions can get really obsessed with buildings. It seems obvious but the people get forgotten. What we believe in in Future Yard is a regeneration organisation.

“We use music but fundamentally it’s about changing the place and that’s reimagining it, regenerating it and creating new opportunities for people. Our approach has always been starting at the bottom and building up.”