Sam Fender has donated the complete sum of his £25,000 honor prize money to the Music Venues Trust, which functions to preserve the Britain's grassroots live music spots.
He was awarded the cheque on October 16 as his third album the album was chosen as the top album of the last 12 months.
The musician has decided to hand the money over to the trust, in recognition of the crucial part small stages played in his beginning days.
"I couldn't be pursuing this success if it hadn't been for all the performances I played around the area, and elsewhere, when I was just getting going," stated the artist. "These venues are legendary, but they are facing challenges."
Since the start of 2023, over 150 of these spaces have shut down – approximately 16 percent of the entire UK sector.
Over the past year, major artists including the band Pulp, Coldplay, Katy Perry and Ed Sheeran have all aided the Music Venues Trust in its attempts to help venues survive, by including a modest fee to their ticket costs, which goes to help independent venues.
Sam Fender also participated, raising in excess of £100,000 on his recent tour to assist thirty-eight local spots across England, Scotland, and Wales.
The donation helped locations that were facing potential shutdown due to difficulties stemming from water damage, blazes and bereavements, as well as regulatory hurdles, conflicts and neighbor objections.
Additional spaces received funding support in improving amenities and gear that positively impacted artists and concertgoers.
"The notion that revenue from performances in large arenas supports the smaller venues, where it all starts for musicians like me, is just logical," Sam Fender has stated.
The musician is far from the only musician to donate his Mercury Prize funds to charitable organizations.
In the band received the award in 1996 for their album Different Class, lead singer Jarvis Cocker stated that the act would donate their prize money to the organization War Child.
That year, musician she divided her award among a few organizations, such as the NSPCC and a Sickle Cell charity.
"And I contributed a £1,000 to my local community centre, to their gymnastics program, because I did gymnastics when I was younger and they needed better apparatus," Ms Dynamite explained to a publication.
Previously, Ezra Collective gave their winnings to the community center that supported their act, alongside other independent music bodies.
Additionally winners that year they gave their award to a MS organization after a friend was diagnosed the disease.
"Receiving the award was ample," said singer Heather Small. "The money was the cherry on top but we didn't need the extra, because we had the main prize. So our winning touched another person's life."
Recently, the MVT announced it had rescued two grassroots venues in south-east England, by placing them under community ownership.
One venue in the city and the other in the city were acquired under the community ownership initiative, which is funded by Arts Council England and enthusiasts who purchase "shares" in the buildings.
