Main Stage: At Skelmersdale independent music venue E Rooms, community really is everything

It’s no secret that the creative arts industries are struggling financially right now. And for all the talk about stratospheric ticket pricing for big artists and festivals, the UK’s grassroots music venues – locations that allow smaller artists to tour and new acts to emerge who will one day play said festivals – are in a pretty dire position. Just look at the Music Venue Trust’s 2025 report, which found that 6,000 jobs had been lost and 30 venues had fully closed over the course of the year.

As our name suggests, The Independent is all about supporting projects that stray from the mainstream. That’s why this summer saw us team up with the Music Venue Trust to relaunch the Main Stage programme for the first time since 2024, allowing us to shine the spotlight on and support the country’s grassroots venues. We’ll be speaking to the people running the show at eight venues spanning the UK, talking to them about the importance of these spaces and what they need to stay afloat.

Each venue that features in the Main Stage series will be the subject of an article in The Independent, and receive £5,000 worth of ad inventory, along with design assets that they can use in their comms and marketing to highlight that they’re a Main Stage picked venue.

Located in Skelmersdale, E Rooms is an independent, music-based community hub serving the people of west Lancashire for a decade as of this year. On the one hand, the venue has everything touring and local musicians could dream of, with the 140-capacity venue featuring industry-standard sound and lighting and an atmospheric stage to perform on. But the other side of E Rooms is its beating local heart, a not-for-profit space where “music, arts and community can thrive side by side”.

Founded by a group of passionate local musicians who wanted to bring people together through creativity, E Rooms is a gig venue (and a great one at that). Yet it offers so much more to the people of Skelmersdale: music education, rehearsal spaces, SEND arts and music sessions, open mic nights and its own choir. “From day one, the aim has been simple: give Skelmersdale a safe, welcoming space where music, arts and community can thrive side by side,” Ste Horrocks, one of the team members behind the venue, tells The Independent.

The Independent: How would you describe E Rooms to a newcomer?

E Rooms is an out-of-town grassroots music venue that has a strong sense of community at its core. We offer a safe, inspiring creative space that is relaxed, welcoming and full of energy, with music happening in every available space, and people of all ages learning, rehearsing, creating and connecting.

Our vibrant 140-capacity stage room is fully wheelchair accessible and equipped with a professional, industry-standard PA system and lighting rig. We also offer three fully equipped rehearsal spaces that provide local musicians with everything they need to hone their craft, alongside local bands occupying our seven monthly-let rehearsal rooms, which are used daily.

The Independent: What are some of the biggest challenges you’re up against?

One of the biggest challenges we face is attracting bands to come and play our out-of-town venue. Geographically, we are right in between Manchester and Liverpool, and we’ve found that more established bands and their agents/promoters are reluctant to book a show at a venue that is not in a city centre. We also have challenges securing funding for new music and youth programmes, as well as core running costs. Keeping up with the rising prices of running a large community music hub takes an enormous amount of resources. Like many grassroots music venues, we’re constantly balancing our creative objectives with sustainability.

The Independent: What’s on the cards for E Rooms in the future?

We want to continue to grow our grassroots music venue by promoting and developing an original live music scene within a small town. We feel we do this by inspiring confidence and creativity, and exposing young people, especially those who struggle in traditional education, to live music. We want to support more bands and musicians to navigate the rocky road into the music industry, expand our alternative provision programmes, and build on collaborating with other creative organisations locally and nationally. We plan to open more doors than ever; everything we do is about opening doors for people who need a chance, a spark of creativity or just someone to believe in them.

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The Independent: What is it about running a music venue that makes it worthwhile?

The best part of running E Rooms is watching people grow: young people gaining confidence, new bands forming, artists developing, and community members supporting each other. We’re lucky to have incredible local backing, so people donate equipment, volunteer their time and help us keep the place alive. That sense of community, creativity and shared purpose is what makes all the hard work worthwhile. There’s a lot more to grassroots music than meets the eye, and we’re lucky enough to see it in action every day.

The Independent: What’s been one of your favourite recent gigs at the venue?

We’ve had brilliant established artists play here, including Mark Chadwick of The Levellers. But our favourite gigs are always the ones featuring new, upcoming bands, especially our E Rooms Academy bands. Right now, Skelmersdale has a genuinely healthy new band scene, full of raw energy and creativity. Watching these young musicians rehearse, learn, and then blow the audience away is what inspires us most. Every year, we host Skemfest in collaboration with a local social club – two days of live music from established and upcoming bands, outdoors in a field full of music fans. Seeing original local bands wow the crowd year after year pushes us to keep building and supporting this scene.