Albuquerque Joins Initiative to Coordinate Timely and Safe Music Venue Reopenings
June 11, 2020
The City of Albuquerque recently partnered with Music Cities Together for an international initiative aimed at promoting best practices, work plans, and protocols to ensure music venues are able to open as quickly and safely as possible. Reopen Every Venue Safely (REVS) is a campaign to develop and disseminate action plans and budgets rooted in a hyper-pragmatic understanding of the challenges ahead.
Music Cities Together is supporting 10 pilot communities with technical assistance and mentorship as they develop their own local reopening plans. Working as a national cohort, these pilot communities will share information and resources as they develop their locally-based work plans and protocols. Later this year, these pilot plans will be made available to public officials and venues in other communities in an effort to share best practices and learnings.
Other communities include King County/Seattle, New Orleans, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, and Portland.
"With an incredible diversity of performance venues across Albuquerque, a city known for its vibrant live music, we are eager to reunite musicians and audiences in a responsible and safe manner," said Dr. Shelle Sanchez, the City of Albuquerque's Cultural Services Department director. "We look forward to this important national discussion as we all develop and implement best practices that bring musicians back to stages and live music back to our communities."
Parallel REVS initiatives are operating in Canada and the United Kingdom.
REVS will be guided by a national leadership council of government officials, public health experts, venue leadership, and, communications experts to develop best practices, identify and support pilot cities, and bring the project to national scale.
"We all want live music back as quickly and safely as possible," Music Cities Together's Michael Bracy said. "This can only happen through unprecedented levels of communication and partnership between local governments, venues, and communications experts to make sure venues are safe and music workers and audiences are protected."
Music City Together's Don Pitts added, "Local governments, including elected officials, public health experts and creative industries advocates, are responsible for implementing and deploying reopening strategies in alignment with Federal, State and Regional guidelines. For live music to reopen, government officials require direct and coordinated access to venue owners and other music businesses to ensure they are included in reopening strategies."
REVS is a project of Music Cities Together and is overseen by a leadership team including Michael Bracy, Don Pitts, Kate Becker, Dani Grant, Ashlye Keaton, and Kwende Kefentse. The goal of MCT is to strengthen mentorship and relationships between public officials, musicians, music industry leaders, advocates, and researchers interested in supporting local music ecosystems. For more information, visit www.musiccitiestogether.org or https://www.musiccitiestogether.org/revs.
Interested parties can sign up for the REVS mailing list at https://form.jotform.com/201256984278061 or via [email protected].