North London music venue The Lexington launches crowdfunding campaign -

It’s a brilliant venue – and one I’ve visited and performed at many times – but The Lexington in Islington is now struggling to stay afloat as the coronavirus lockdown means that its doors have to stay shut.

They’ve now launched a crowdfunder looking to raise £25,000 to keep paying their staff and ensure that the business will be ready to reopen when the crisis is over.

Scroll down to find out more – and please donate if you can:

Help Save Jobs and Live Music at The Lexington

During the early stages of the UK’s COVID-19 pandemic we took the difficult decision, for the first time in 11 years, to close our doors. We did this ahead of government intervention as we thought it was the most socially responsible thing to do. Unfortunately we’ve found ourselves in the increasingly difficult position of getting the doors back open when the time comes.

Why We’re In This Situation…

From the outset we’ve been committed to paying our staff in full over the closure period as it would be impossible to do what we do without them. However, between topping up furloughed wages in full and paying our rent we are spending over £25k each month for the luxury of having our doors closed.
Our commitment to our staff is our top priority but as we have received no relief on rent, are ineligible for government grants and have received absolutely no compensation from our insurers, we face a very real threat of permanent closure within only a few short months. We simply can’t afford to keep our doors shut for £25k a month, which is why we’re asking for your help.

What You Can Do To Help…

We’re asking for whatever you can spare on beer and ticket money that might have gone unspent over the last few weeks. Your donations will help to ensure that our staff continue to survive this unprecedented time with a job to come back to when we are allowed to reopen our doors.

In the longer term we want to make sure we can continue to bring you the best bands for another decade, offer artists the best opportunities at the start of their careers and weather one of the harshest climates grassroots music venues have ever had to face.

Join The Raffle and A Very Special Series of Gigs…

As well as some great rewards, every donor of £10 or more will be entered into a raffle to win prizes kindly donated by some of our friends’ record labels and mates in bands. We’ll be announcing this bounty throughout the campaign, so make sure you allow us to keep you up-to-date with all this exciting news, including advance tickets to our reopening series of shows!

We’ve rescheduled our April, May and June programming for later in the year in the hope that we can reopen in July or August. We’ve even booked a series of events to celebrate our reopening featuring friends of the Lexington and some of the biggest names to grace our stage. We can’t wait to share this special series of events and all donors will be notified with advance ticket links ahead of the general public as a small token of our gratitude.

A Thank You To Everyone…

We understand this is an incredibly difficult time for everyone and have been deeply moved by the kind words and sentiment that people have shown us over the last few weeks. The whole team at The Lexington would like to wish every single person who’s supported us over the years the best of health throughout this difficult time and all the happiness and good times once the future allows.
See you in the pit x