Totnes venue Jamming Station launches £50,000 appeal to save youth music hub

Jamming Station, a youth music venue in Totnes, Devon, has launched a £50,000 fundraising appeal it is calling a "do-or-die" campaign. The money will pay for essential fire safety work, a new PA and lighting system, and soundproofing, with higher funding levels adding sensory spaces, an employability cafe and training facilities at the venue, known as the Town Mill.

Co-director Jacqui Perks described the venue, which is part youth club, part rehearsal room and part training ground for the music industry, as somewhere young people can be themselves. "For many of our young people, this is the place where they finally find their tribe," she said.

Perks and fellow musicians Beth Coombes and Lee Friese-Greene started Jamming Station in 2012 after loading amps into cars each week because their children had nowhere in Totnes to play. Former student Izzi Warburton, who has gone on to tour internationally with Primal Scream and Kula Shaker, credited the venue directly: "I'm incredibly grateful to Jamming Station for what it gave me as an artist and producer."

The appeal lands amid a wider crisis for UK grassroots venues. The Music Venue Trust reported that 30 such venues closed permanently between July 2024 and July 2025, with 48 more ceasing to operate as gig spaces, and that 53.8 percent of grassroots venues turned no profit over the past year. Efforts to help have grown too: the Royal Albert Hall became the first arena to commit £1 from every ticket sold to a fund supporting smaller venues, backed by artists including Coldplay, Sam Fender and Katy Perry.

Jamming Station's appeal is open now, part of a broader push that has already seen artists like Pulp and Mumford & Sons raise £500,000 for grassroots venues nationwide through their own UK tour ticket contributions.