Manchester independent venue and bar renae has introduced Promoter Promise, a support programme for marginalised promoters in the city. The Northern Quarter venue announced the initiative on Instagram, setting out a package intended to help three applicants develop and deliver their own events. Each selected promoter will receive a £1,000 curatorial budget, a £350 bursary and £300 specifically allocated to marketing. DJ Mag reported that the scheme combines those separate payments with practical backing from the venue.
The programme is aimed at people from marginalised or underrepresented demographics who live in Greater Manchester. Applicants must have some experience in the arts and creative sector, while their events-promotion work must amount to less than two years. renae's eligibility wording also opens the scheme to people working in adjacent roles, including musicians, sound engineers and stage managers. The criteria place the funding around early-stage promoters rather than people with longer records of producing events.
Promoter Promise includes support after the allocation of budgets. Creative Producer and Events Programmer Beau-Azra Scott will provide one-to-one mentoring for the successful applicants, while renae will offer assistance on the ground during events at the venue. Participants will also be able to use the space for future events without paying hire fees after their initial dates. The package therefore covers event development, delivery and subsequent use of the venue, according to the report.
The initial focus for the funded events is TOPP, The Other People Place, renae's upstairs club venue. The room opened in March of the year of the report. Its name honours James Stinson, identified in the report as a Detroit electro pioneer and a member of Drexciya, and refers to his best-known solo alias. renae has positioned that upstairs room as the first site for the applicants' proposed events under Promoter Promise.
Applications are due by 4PM BST on Monday 28th September. The announced process asks prospective participants to submit a proposal. renae has not presented Promoter Promise simply as a general venue programme: it is structured around an application, three successful candidates, separate curatorial and promotional funds, mentoring from Scott, venue assistance and access to free hire for later events. Those are the terms outlined in the announcement reported by DJ Mag.
Scott told DJ Mag that representation affects more than the people appearing onstage. They said an event's experience can be affected when performers do not have backstage staff with whom they can relate or connect, and said the same concern extends to audience members and staff. Scott also described an industry centred around art and music, often around genres originating from global-majority cultures, while arguing that its makeup should be different.
In further comments, Scott said there was disproportionate representation among the people running and producing events, linking that imbalance to systemic issues discussed in reports that informed Promoter Promise. They said renae had become particularly aware that diversity among promoters is not straightforward to secure, and identified that as the reason for the project. Scott said they hoped people outside the target group would understand and support the initiative, while those it serves would be creatively galvanised.
The report places the scheme alongside recent research on discrimination and representation in UK music and nightlife. The first UK Music Census, conducted by Help Musicians and the Musicians' Union in 2024, found that more than half of women working in the industry had experienced discrimination. DJ Mag said women were overwhelmingly represented as performers, with significant underrepresentation in other specialisms. The source also described successive studies as identifying imbalance across gender and ethnicity, as well as widespread prejudice.
Other research cited in the report includes Misogyny In Music, an analysis by the UK Government's Women and Equalities Committee, which characterised the problem as "endemic" and referred to a "boys club". DJ Mag also cited Black Music Means Business: Driving Economic Growth In The UK, published earlier in the year. That research found that genres of Black origin generated 80% of British music revenue, while 22% of senior professionals identified as such and a 20% pay gap existed compared with white counterparts. Around 80 Black creators and workers contributed, reporting persistent inequality and barriers to progression.
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