As we wrote back in April, these are dark days for the New Orleans music community and live music across the world. And while we don’t know when we will see the light at the end of the tunnel, we have reason to hope that New Orleans’ music venues will be accessing the best possible information and resources about how to reopen safely.
New Orleans is one of 11 pilot communities participating in the Reopen Every Venue Safely (REVS) initiative, a project of Music Cities Together. REVS facilitates collaboration between local governments, public health officials, venues and communications experts to develop locally-oriented workplans, protocols, budgets and outreach strategies to make sure music communities are able to take a hyper-pragmatic look at what it’s going to take to bring back live music. Working locally and as a national (and international) cohort, REVS communities mesh directives from Federal, State and local governments with the tangible needs of music venues.
As the U.S. was beginning to reel from early shutdowns and confusion back in February, Kate Becker was one of the first people connected to the music industry to see the writing on the wall. Becker, Creative Economy Director at King County, Washington under Executive Dow Constantine, knew America was in for some quiet nights. Becker remembers “The pandemic wasn’t going to be a wash—especially for music venues. The shutdown was coming, placing already economically vulnerable music scenes at further risk. In the face of a looming catastrophe, it became clear the best thing for music communities to do was to organize.” In April, Becker and her colleagues at the nonprofit Music Policy Forum recognized the need to control what we could control. In the face of this threat, MPF board members Becker, Michael Bracy, Dani Grant, Ashlye Keaton, Kwende Kefentse and Sound Music Cities leads Don Pitts and Bobby Garza met with stakeholders across the globe and responded with a community-based solution: the Reopen Every Venues Safely (REVS) initiative.
Bracy said “REVS is based on a simple idea: we don’t know when it will be appropriate to reopen live music venues — science will dictate that. What we do know is we have to use the downtime to prepare the basic protocols, strategies and action plans that will put us in position to reopen as quickly and safely as possible while communicating as transparently and effectively as possible with musicians, venue workers and audiences.” Quickly, eleven US cities volunteered to serve as pilots: Albuquerque, Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, King County/Seattle, Los Angeles, Louisville, New Orleans and Portland. REVS also launched parallel initiatives in Canada and the United Kingdom. Working locally under radically different conditions and nationally as a cohort, these pilot cities have built local infrastructure, developed best practices, identified issues of concern and generally prepared their community to safely and quickly open live music– but only when the time is right. Simultaneously, REVS leaders are working to support and amplify advocacy efforts including the Save Our Stages campaign to provide much needed relief for independent venues impacted by the shutdown. REVS national team leaders and pilots are preparing to share recommendations with other cities across the country to help support the hard work of a future reopening. These recommendations, reflections and best practices can be found on the new REVS information portal: https://musiccitiestogether.com/revs REVS leader Dani Grant found the cohort to provide much needed support for leaders in the respective pilots as all navigated unchartered territory in reimagining live music during the pandemic. “Watching data and effective strategies being shared so freely amongst the pilots and the impact of that sharing working its way into pragmatic plans and initiatives was phenomenal.”
