Following the £546,000 raised by the first #ILoveLive prize draw in 2020 for the charity Stagehand, #ILoveLive 2 offers further unique prizes from artists, promoters, venues and festivals to help support music and road crew in need through the pandemic crisis.
Artists already on board include Foo Fighters, Mumford & Sons, Iron Maiden, Muse, Spice Girls, Keane, The 1975, Jack Garratt, Imogen Heap, Passenger, Genesis, The Levellers, Simple Minds, Queen, Adam Lambert, Billy Bragg, Stereophonics, Two Door Cinema Club, Lindsey Buckingham Of Fleetwood Mac and Frank Turner.
The #ILoveLive Prize Draw campaign was established by industry figureheads David Stopps, Ian McAndrew and Tom Schroeder, alongside Andrew Lenthall and Mike Lowe from Stagehand: ‘When I heard about the tenth suicide among stage crew in late August, I knew I had to do something,’ Stopps says. ‘Stage crew are not only suffering great financial hardship but most are also experiencing mental ill health. Money raised from these prize draws will actually save lives and help to safeguard their future.’
Stagehand is the only UK charity that specifically helps music stage and road crew and is dedicated to providing hardship funding for live events industry workers. In September 2020 the Stagehand Covid-19 Crew Relief Fund was launched, with a target of raising £1m (including donations) by the end of 2020. This was achieved with the current total at £1.17m, which has enabled Stagehand to issue more than 900 grants to crew, with many more to follow in 2021.
The #ILoveLive prize draw campaign, in partnership with the Crowdfunder platform, gives music fans the chance to give something back to the people who make life-affirming live events happen and to win money-can’t-buy prizes from their favourite artists.
‘This is not an auction,’ the fundraiser says. ‘It’s a series of prize draws where each artist has their own prize draw. With an auction, only a few fans with the deepest pockets get involved, whereas with a prize draw the whole fanbase can participate. Fans from all over the world can enter for £5 via the artist’s #ILoveLive Crowdfunder page. If a fan enters multiple times, they stand a better chance of winning.’
‘The #ILoveLive campaign on Crowdfunder is critical to supporting the behind-the-scenes workers in the live music industry,’ says Rob Love from Crowdfunder. ‘Without roadies there won’t be a live events industry, even when Covid restrictions are lifted. Crowdfunding is a way for communities to come together to support causes close to their heart, and this is a great example of how the music industry is pulling together to help each other in a time of need.’
