THE BLACK HEART in Camden Town has just 3 weeks left to raise another £65,000 to save it from permanent closure. Launched last month, the #SaveTheBlackHeart Crowdfunder has so far raised over £85,000 of its £150,000 target.
With just under one month to go, the iconic bar and venue has announced some new prize incentives, with the hope of hitting target by March 23rd or face permanent closure. These include an Orange Crush Pro 120 Guitar Amp and a Jack Daniels Guitar Les Paul Style Guitar.
The owners posted the following message today:
We are The Black Heart and we are in trouble.
We are an independently owned ‘destination’ live music venue and bar for people who like heavy music. Since opening in August 2009, we have hosted over 2,500 shows.
But, we have an insurmountable – and ever-growing – mountain of debt, and our landlords are threatening us with legal action.
To help us raise the £150,000 we need to survive, we’ve been running a Crowdfunder campaign and there are just over 3 weeks left.
We’ve had incredible support from The Black Heart community – and we would like to thank every single person who’s donated. It has been truly overwhelming. We’ve been running the entire campaign on our own, relying on social media and donated prizes from some amazing friends, and the response has blown us away, especially at a time when we know money is tight. People have even been holding their own fundraisers for us too, like Frank Turner (raising over £6,000) and Employed to Serve (raising over £1,000). So, thank you, everybody.
In total so far, we’ve managed to raise £86,659. It’s a huge sum – and we’ve passed the halfway mark – but we still have a long way to go.
The roadmap for lifting lockdown suggests indoor hospitality might reopen on 17 May but social restrictions won’t be completely over until 21 June at the earliest.
We want to reopen safely and we want to do what is right for our staff, customers, artists and society in general – but every week we remain closed or restricted, we build up thousands more in debt. The £150,000 we need to raise is simply to cover the build-up of debt – the bills that have been mounting up while closed or heavily restricted for over a year. It is impossible for us to trade profitably until all restrictions are lifted.
But now we know that we might be able to reopen on 17 May (and potentially even be back to normal in June), it has never been more urgent to Save The Black Heart! We have a huge gig calendar ready to go, both socially distanced and full capacity, but if we don’t meet our Crowdfunder target, there will be no gigs at all. Ever again. The Black Heart will close.
So, please, dig deep to Save The Black Heart. We have new prizes every week – with some huge items coming up, like signed KISS memorabilia, guitars, pedals, amps, festival tickets and massive record bundles.
It’s not just about us, it’s about the UK underground music scene and the amazing community that has supported us so far. London and Camden won’t be the same without us.
We have just over 3 weeks to meet our target or The Black Heart could be lost forever. It truly is make or break for us.
Thank you!
#savetheblackheart
The Crowdfunder is live until the 23rd March at
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/savetheblackheart/backers#start