Website and ticket broker Resident Advisor received nearly $1 million via a COVID-19 relief cultural grant issued on behalf of the UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport on Monday, according to the Arts Council England.
The grant for £750,000 ($976,515 by October 13 2020’s common exchange rate) was allocated for “cultural organizations that were financially stable before COVID-19, but were at imminent risk of failure,” according to the Arts Council England:
The list of grants issued on Monday can be viewed here.
The information was first reported by Chicago artist and producer James N Murray aka Basilio Nichols, who noted that according to the above spreadsheet Resident Advisor’s request was the 54th highest grant offered out of a list of 1,385 applicants.
Let's put this into perspective. On that sheet you can see that out of 1,385 requests for funding help, Resident Advisor is slotted in at #54 in terms of amount requested at 750K.
If you can't see the problem in that, well… that's the state of this industry in a nutshell.
— Basilio Nichols (@basilionichols) October 12, 2020
As a ticket broker, Resident Advisor was hit hard by the global lockdowns following the COVID-19 pandemic. When the pandemic began, Resident Advisor launched an initiative called “Save Our Scene,” the third item of which suggested users should “Skip Your Refund” for live events. Separately, RA also informed their own customers that they would keep the brokerage fee on every ticket sold for cancelled events unless customers specifically emailed them to ask for it:
Everyone around the world is being pressured to give up cancellation and booking fees. I don't think the onus should be on customers to specifically ask for it.
Ref: pic.twitter.com/2khi8RvaYr
— 5 Magazine [5mag.net] (@5Magazine) March 19, 2020
Since the pandemic began, RA launched a two-tiered subscription service priced at $80 and $300 annually which includes this handsome tote bag:
Top image: “RA Tote Bag-a-Go-Go” (Andy Warhol, 2020, Colorized)
[…] Вебсайт и билетный брокер Resident Advisor получил почти 1 млн долларов США из британского культурного гранта, выделенного Британским Департаментом культуры, медиа и спорта. Об этом со ссылкой на Совет по делам искусств Англии сообщает журнал 5Mag. […]