Jamming Station seeks £50,000 to save its Totnes venue and youth services

A fundraising campaign hoping to raise £50,000 has been announced by a youth music organisation seeking to improve its venue.

Initial donations will pay for urgent fire protection upgrades, modern sound and lighting equipment and acoustic treatment. If additional targets are reached, the Jamming Station in Totnes hopes to develop a complete youth centre with sensory rooms, a café focused on workplace skills and dedicated training areas.

Based at Town Mill in Devon, the organisation is described in a press release as somewhere that “is part youth club, part rehearsal room, part training ground for the music industry” for younger members of the community. Supporters can donate through its Crowdfunder page.

Jacqui Perks, joint director of Jamming Station, explained: “For many of our young people, this is the place where they finally find their tribe. They come out of school carrying all that pressure and enter an environment where they can unwind among other young musicians who see them, understand them and accept them.

“In a band, everybody has a part to play. You have to listen to each other and keep going when something doesn’t work. Those are music skills, but they’re also life skills.”

The Town Mill CREDIT: Eliot Ely

The project was founded in 2012 after Perks joined fellow musicians Beth Coombes and Lee Friese-Greene in transporting amplifiers by car every week because “their children had nowhere in Totnes to play”.

Former Jamming Station participant Izzi Warburton has since built an international career as a session musician, performing with artists such as Primal Scream and Kula Shaker.

Warburton recalled: “I’m incredibly grateful to Jamming Station for what it gave me as an artist and producer. Since leaving when I was about 18, I’ve been fortunate enough to tour the world as a musician and work in studios across the UK.”

Izzi Warburton CREDIT: Jamming Station

He continued: “It is so important that young people have somewhere they can get off their phones, connect with each other properly and become absorbed in something creative. Making music is deeply educational, and I really hope people get behind this appeal so Jamming Station can give many more young people the opportunities it gave me.”

Elsewhere, recent figures from The Music Venue Trust revealed that 30 independent music venues permanently closed between July 2024 and July 2025, while another 48 stopped hosting concerts.

Among the locations that remained open, the typical profit margin stood at only 2.5 per cent. Meanwhile, 53.8 per cent recorded no profit during the previous year, while more than 6,000 jobs, representing 19 per cent of the workforce, disappeared over the same period.

The disappearance of performance spaces in regional parts of the UK has already prompted warnings that touring outside major cities has almost completely collapsed. A separate MVT study published last year found that Britain was losing one venue every two weeks.

Last year, the Royal Albert Hall in London became the first arena to adopt a LIVE ticket levy in support of smaller venues. Through the initiative, £1 from each ticket purchase is returned to the British live music sector, helping independent spaces continue operating and emerging performers remain on the road. Major artists backing the scheme include Coldplay, Sam Fender and Katy Perry, who have each promised to contribute some of their touring income to the grassroots community.

In May last year, Wolf Alice’s Joff Oddie also appeared alongside music industry leaders during a government hearing, where he argued that efforts to protect venues and developing performers were moving too slowly. Reports later showed that British tour ticket contributions had generated £500,000 for grassroots venues, supported by musicians including Pulp and Mumford & Sons.