The Forum Darlington: Serving the community through music

Opened in 2004, The Forum is a music venue, rehearsal space, recording studio and community hub close to Darlington town centre.

As well as putting on live gigs, it offers music tuition, all-ages music drop-ins and weekly sessions for young people, called Young Blood. “It’s a place where they can collaborate, network, hone their skills and write songs,” said Forum Director Allison Mckay.

The venue also responds to the needs of the community it serves. “We reacted to the cost-of-living crisis by putting on free activities that involved a hot drink and sandwich,” Allison said. “And when we saw education establishments become less focused on music, we stepped in to fill that gap.”

Privately owned for many years, The Forum was not a financially sustainable business. So, to save it from closure, a group of local people, spearheaded by Allison, set up a community interest company (CIC) and took it over.

The CIC started trading in 2011 and the early years were all about getting it from an unviable to sustainable position. Once that had been achieved, the team began to consider how to improve facilities and services for the local community.

That’s when they looked at capital investment and community shares. “We decided to become a community benefit society (CBS), which I felt very strongly was a better model for us because we are here for the benefit of the community,” said Allison.

The Forum converted to a CBS in 2019. Then Covid stalled their plans to launch a share offer. Cut to September 2024 – after reviewing and reassessing their strategy – a share offer was launched!

To refurbish the building and install a purpose-built studio, the team had secured a £404,000 capital grant from Arts Council England on the proviso they could raise an additional £50,000 from community shares.

To prepare the share offer, they were awarded a development grant of £8,000 from the Community Shares Booster Fund.

“While the Arts Council bid looked more at our creative and cultural offering, the community shares application made us focus on sustainability and financials,” said Allison. 

“The development grant enabled us to work with a financial modelling company to create forecasts, which was extremely helpful. It enabled us to do some great marketing too, which helped the business in general.

“We also engaged with consultants from Music Venue Trust, who helped us develop the business plan we needed to back the share offer. They represent grassroots venues nationally, so it was a good experience working with them – enlightening in lots of ways.”

With a £50,000 target, The Forum successfully applied for £25,000 in match funding from the Community Shares Booster fund. They ended up exceeding their target, raising a total of £75,000 from 225 investor members – including the Booster Fund – when the share offer closed on 31 October.

2025 will see building works carried out to make the space more open, accessible, useful and welcoming to the local community. “We’re extending the kitchen so we can open a community food café and we’re building a new stand-alone recording studio.

“There will also be a new, less restrictive entrance and an accessible mezzanine in the performance hall. It’s all about being engaged with people and giving them a better experience,” said Allison, who’s proud to help make a difference in local people’s lives.

“We’ve seen kids come through here who have taken music up as a professional career choice – some real success stories where lives have been enhanced by having a musical hobby or skill. A student that’s been coming here is now a drum teacher and is doing an apprenticeship with us in social media marketing.

“There was one elderly gent who started coming every week – it was his only social outlet after his wife died. And a couple of people who’d lost their partners met here and got together in a relationship – we have lots of great stories like that.”

Find out more

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