The Meteoro music venue, a small-format one located in Barcelona's Poble-sec neighborhood, hosted this Thursday morning the presentation of the program En Viu Bcn, conceived by the Night Office in collaboration with the Institute of Culture of Barcelona (ICUB) to support more than one hundred live music venues in Barcelona with a capacity equal to or less than 250 people.
The main measure is that the Barcelona city council will allocate one million euros to subsidize small-format live music venues and will create a seal to recognize them. At the press conference, the City Council's Night Commissioner, Carmen Zapata, stressed that small-format music "deserves to be recognized, protected and promoted."
The program arrives almost a month after the City Council announced that venues will go from closing at 11 p.m. to doing so at 1 a.m. and will be able to expand their capacity to 200 people instead of 150 if the established conditions are met.
8,000 euros per venue and requirements
The En Viu Bcn subsidies include a maximum of 8,000 euros per venue, provided they meet a series of requirements, such as performing live music, programming a minimum of 40 concerts a year, being located in the city of Barcelona and having a capacity equal to or less than 250 people, among others. They can be requested starting in October and will be resolved in the first quarter of 2027.
En Viu Bcn aims to highlight "the proximity function that small-format music venues play to understand that they generate cultural life in the neighborhoods," as Zapata stated. The subsidies, she added, not only "acknowledge the economic fragility of this sector, but also guarantee its future and prevent its disappearance."
With these aids, the City Council calculates that the venues could undertake different improvements, such as expanding their musical programming or carrying out renovation works in the premises' facilities. Applications will receive the subsidy up to the limit of the available credit and, in case the global amount is higher, an equitable distribution of the fund among all venues will be applied.
A census with all venues
In addition to the subsidy, the Barcelona City Council has also created a recognition seal for all the venues that program live music in the city. The distribution will be handled by the Night Office, which, with the collaboration of the Association of Concert Halls of Catalonia (ASACC) and the Association of Jazz and Modern Music Musicians of Catalonia (AMJM), aims to strengthen the city's venues in addition to getting others to join. The Night Office plans to include on its website a list with the census of all these venues, as part of its commitment to cultural dissemination.
