Our Future with Future Yard

As part the social value commitments we made as part of our successful bid for the Liverpool ACC Arena Hard FM Contract (the venue hosting Eurovision 2023) we identified the perfect community scheme for Kimpton to work with to support the arena’s aim to develop the live events industry at a grass-roots level.

Future Yard is an exciting 300 indoor / 500 outdoor capacity new music community venue that, as well as bringing some of today’s most exciting new artists to Wirral, are providing key early performance opportunities for emerging local musicians. It’s just 247 seconds away from the ACC arena campus.

We have partnered with Future Yard by sponsoring them through their Future 50 programme. As part of the sponsorship deal, we have put in a small amount of cash, but will also be carrying out all of the servicing of their heating and emergency systems, alarms, gas certifications, extraction systems, water hygiene, and putting systems in place for this to be managed internally. We’ll also be looking into the feasibility of solar installation and other renewable technologies. All of this will be delivered at no cost.

We’ll be taking on the design and future planning of the M&E systems for their planned new extension, right up to RIBA stage 5. When completed, this will raise the capacity of the venue from 300 to 1,600 and make it an even more attractive proposition for some of the biggest bands to visit the Wirral and a fantastic asset for the local community.

But the work of Future Yard is not all about the high-profile bands of today. They have re-imagined the role of a live music venue, providing live industry training and a regional hub for artist development. Future Yard run a series of training programmes to enable young people to begin a career in the live music and events industry. Their Propeller training programme is a free to access programme aimed at equipping artists with the skills to succeed in the modern music industry through workshops and professional mentoring.

Sound Check is a training programme in partnership with The Learning Foundry designed to introduce young people aged 16+ to the skills they need to pursue a career in the live music industry. The free programme focuses on Technical Production and Live Music Event Management. Students completing the programme have already gone on to employment in the music and live performance industry.

The venue also runs sessions for complete beginners and houses five high-quality rehearsal studios with full PA and backline available for local musicians to hire seven days a week from as little as £6.25 an hour.

Craig Pennington, Co Founder of Future Yard summed this up beautifully when he said

“Birkenhead – and Wirral – is a place with music in its DNA, but its been too long since we’ve had a dedicated live music venue in our town. We believe that music venues are the maternity wards of creative culture. They are always the trailblazers, the first cultural flagpole when it comes to thinking about a place differently.

We believe that through utilising the power of music, we can change our town for the better, inspiring local people, creating life-changing opportunities and shaping a new music future.”

We’ll be doing a lot more with them through the year and championing their work, their role and the bands they’ll be hosting.

In the words of Matt Breakwell, Kimpton BDM. “We’re really looking forward to working with Future Yard. They are creating something amazing and we’re proud to help them make it happen”