Once again, loss making Pop Brixton seems to be in the front of the queue when it comes to tax payer funded hand outs.
Pop Brixton has just received a £220,385 grant from the first round of the government’s culture recovery fund, on top of the £24,000 they received in August 2020 from the Emergency Grassroots Music Venues Fund.
Peckham Levels, which is also owned by Pop Brixton’s owners Makeshift Community, has also received a grant of £131,998.
The fund is supposed to be used to support cultural organisations stay afloat. It is rather a stretch to suggest that Pop Brixton is a cultural organisation, when only a small proportion of what it does is devoted to cultural activities.
The grant is supposed to support Pop Brixton from 1st October through to 31st March 2021.
How much of the fund is used on cultural activities remains to be seen. Pop Brixton’s events calendar is certainly looking very bare at the moment.
The criteria for receiving a grant is that the, “Organisations must have been financially sustainable before Covid-19 but are now at imminent risk of failure and have exhausted all
other options for increasing their resilience.”
Having lost money for the last four years, Pop Brixton is financially sustainable only as a result of the deep pockets of its millionaire backers, The Collective LLP, and the generosity of Lambeth council.
If Pop Brixton is now “at imminent risk of failure”, you wouldn’t know it from the blog they wrote just two weeks ago about their accounts, in which they say:
Finally, with the continued positive impact being made at Pop Brixton, we were delighted to agree a further extension to the lease with Lambeth.
The lease now runs to November 2022… We look forward to continuing our work in Brixton and with the local community over this period and through these most challenging of times.
It is also open to debate whether Pop Brixton had “exhausted all other options for increasing their resilience”, given that they have been kept afloat by the Collective LLP, who has loaned them several hundred thousand pounds.
In addition, Pop Brixton’s owners Makeshift Community received a cash injection last year of £7.8 million. Whoever is propping up these organisations is clearly not short of a few quid.
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Background
- Grow Brixton to Pop Brixton – how a green oasis for the community turned into a 21st Century business park
- Brixton’s loss making Pop Brixton remains in debt owing creditors £655,000 and with £800,000 of losses to pay off (Oct 2020)
- Backfiring Pop Brixton registers losses for the third year in a row as Lambeth declares it a community success story