£2.5m Help Musicians fund at capacity

A £2.5m fund set up to help musicians during the coronavirus crisis is set to reach capacity after just five days.

More than 3,500 people have applied for financial assistance since Friday, says the charity Help Musicians UK.

Touring and gigging musicians have been particularly affected by the lockdown, as months of work simply vanished in mid-March.

Many of them (up to 25%) are not covered by the government’s scheme to support freelancers, and have no other source of income during the lockdown.

As such, many musicians have fallen through the gaps of the Government’s emergency safety nets and have been left with nothing but Universal Credit to survive on.

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