CoSTAR Futures: Grass Roots Music Venues

In 2025 CoSTAR National Lab undertook a research project exploring the value of technology innovation for UK grass roots music venues. We surveyed 66 key figures across the live music ecosystem which then informed a nationwide R&D competition we ran in collaboration with Music Venues Trust and the MusicFutures Creative Cluster in Liverpool.

In 2026, four UK creative companies were granted access to CoSTAR infrastructure and research expertise to develop, build and test a series of new tech-enabled live experiences in grassroots venues across Liverpool, Bristol, and London.

We now owe a debt of gratitude to Megaverse, Sonalux, Bluman Associates, Studio Tonto, the artists and venues they collaborated with and our own research teams for their vision, hard work and determination in bringing these pilots to fruition.

Following audience testing, and data analysis, our full findings are now published in our latest report "The Future of Grass Roots Live Music".

We hope that this project gives practical form to some of the recommendations from the Government's "Turn It Up" strategy for UK Music.

And we would like to thank each of the companies that worked so hard to deliver these pilots along with the venues, artists researchers, and all those working across the UK's live music sector who contributed to this project.

Looking ahead to 2026–2027, CoSTAR will build on these foundations through our P3R demonstrator, exploring content provenance and the ethical adoption of AI within live performance.