Grassroots Venue Support Scheme: what it offers, and where spoken word fits
The Night-Time Economy Grassroots Venue Support Scheme doubled to €1 million in 2026, with grants of up to €20,000 available to independent venues programming emerging Irish talent. The scheme could strengthen the small-stage ecosystem on which spoken word depends, but its current rules prioritise live music and comedy, leaving spoken word artists in a less certain position.
For many emerging performers, the first significant stage is not a national theatre or major festival. It is a room above a pub, a small independent venue or a locally programmed night where an audience may be encountering their work for the first time.
The Night-Time Economy Grassroots Venue Support Scheme was created to support precisely that part of Ireland's cultural infrastructure. The €1 million scheme, administered by the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, provides financial assistance to small and medium-sized independent venues programming emerging Irish and Irish-based artists. It represents the fourth iteration of the Department's Night-Time Economy support programme and follows the Grassroots Music Venue Support Scheme introduced in 2025.
The fund doubled from €500,000 in 2025 to €1 million in 2026. Last year's scheme supported 34 venues across 13 counties. In 2026, 60 venues were offered funding, including 28 outside Ireland's major cities.
Its premise is straightforward: programming an emerging artist carries financial risk. An act without an established following may not guarantee ticket sales, yet artists need precisely those opportunities if they are to develop an audience and progress professionally.
Funding the stage rather than the artist
The Grassroots Venue Support Scheme differs from an Arts Council bursary or the Basic Income for the Arts in one important respect: individual artists do not apply. The applicant is the venue.
Funding is then used by successful venues to programme a series of live events featuring Irish or Irish-based artists performing original work. The Department identifies grassroots venues as smaller cultural spaces whose programming gives emerging performers opportunities to gain experience, make connections and develop audiences.
That distinction matters because the scheme is attempting to address a different problem from individual artist funding. A grant to an artist can provide time to create work. A grant to a venue can provide somewhere for that work to be performed.
Under the scheme, supported artists must be paid, as must freelance crew working on funded events. Eligible costs can include performers' fees, sound and lighting technicians, advertising and public relations, ticketing, specialist equipment, security, insurance and artists' travel and subsistence. Promoter or producer costs can also be covered, subject to a limit of 25% of the grant awarded.
The result is funding aimed not simply at keeping a building open, but at reducing some of the cost of putting artists on its stage.
Two routes for grassroots venues
The 2026 scheme was divided into two streams, recognising that not every venue has the same history of programming emerging work.
Stream A was aimed at established grassroots venues with at least two years of experience programming emerging Irish or Irish-based artists. It had an €800,000 allocation, with individual grants ranging from €7,000 to €20,000.
To qualify, a venue had to demonstrate at least 36 ticketed and advertised qualifying events across 2024 and 2025 and show that grassroots live performance formed a core part of its identity and programme.
Stream B was designed to create an entry point for venues with a shorter track record. Its €200,000 fund offered grants between €3,000 and €8,000.
Applicants had to demonstrate at least 12 advertised qualifying events during 2025 and commit to using the funding to programme emerging Irish artists.
Under both streams, the Department funds up to 90% of eligible costs. Venues are responsible for the remaining 10%, as well as any expenditure that falls outside the scheme.
There are practical restrictions too. Venues must be registered businesses based in the State, have a capacity of no more than 500 and possess an existing stage or designated performance area. They must also have specified live-performance equipment and use personnel such as a sound engineer, booker, promoter, stage manager, cashier or security staff. Applicants must be tax compliant and liable for commercial rates.
Publicly funded arts centres, hotel bars, sporting venues, schools, colleges and private residences are among those excluded.
Why grassroots venue funding matters for spoken word
Spoken word careers are frequently developed incrementally. A performer may begin with a five-minute open mic slot, move into a curated showcase or slam, develop a 15 or 20-minute set and eventually create a full-length performance. Each stage requires somewhere to happen. Small venues also provide something that is difficult to reproduce through funding directed exclusively at individuals: repeated contact between artists, audiences, promoters and other practitioners.
For a spoken word artist, one performance can lead to another booking. A mixed bill can introduce a poet to a musician or producer. A regular night can allow new material to be tested repeatedly before it becomes part of a larger show.
Supporting grassroots venues can consequently create an indirect form of artist development. The scheme also contains requirements that could improve conditions for emerging performers more generally. All artists appearing at funded events must be paid. Where an established headline artist is programmed, the venue must include at least one emerging supporting artist and provide evidence both that they were programmed and that they were paid.
That is particularly significant in parts of the live cultural sector where emerging performers have traditionally been asked to appear for exposure rather than a fee. The requirement changes the economics of taking a chance on new work. The venue receives assistance with the financial risk, while the emerging artist is still expected to be remunerated.
For spoken word artists, however, the 2026 scheme comes with an important qualification. Despite the broader language around supporting grassroots artists and original work, the detailed conditions of funding state that the scheme's priority is live music of all genres and comedy.
The guidelines explicitly warn that applications proposing projects whose primary focus is an art form or discipline other than music or comedy are likely to be considered ineligible. Funded events are required to showcase Irish artists performing live music or comedy that they have written or created themselves.
That means this cannot accurately be described as a dedicated funding opportunity for spoken word. A venue seeking support to programme a series of conventional poetry or spoken word nights would face a substantial eligibility problem under the 2026 rules.
There may be greater scope for multidisciplinary work in which spoken word forms part of an eligible music or comedy performance, particularly given the increasingly blurred boundaries between poetry, rap, music, storytelling and live performance. But the guidelines do not explicitly identify spoken word as a qualifying discipline.
Spoken word uses many of the same venues, technical infrastructure and night-time audiences as grassroots music and comedy. Its artists face the same difficulty of building audiences without access to affordable small stages. Yet the scheme currently funds the ecosystem in which spoken word operates without clearly recognising spoken word itself as one of its principal eligible forms. For the sector, that creates both an opportunity and a question for future iterations of the scheme.
A doubled fund, and a wider question
The expansion from €500,000 in 2025 to €1 million in 2026 is notable. The number of supported venues increased from 34 to 60, while the maximum grant available to established venues rose from €15,000 to €20,000. The addition of Stream B also broadened the scheme beyond venues already able to demonstrate a two-year grassroots programming record.
That matters for emerging artists because a functioning grassroots circuit provides the intermediate stages between making work privately and appearing on larger cultural stages. For spoken word, however, the scheme also illustrates a recurring difficulty.
The art form shares audiences, venues and working practices with music and comedy but does not always fit neatly into the funding categories surrounding either. A poet performing original work at 9pm in a 100-capacity independent venue may be contributing to the night-time economy in much the same way as a musician or comedian, yet the 2026 guidelines do not give that performance the same clear route to eligibility.
The Grassroots Venue Support Scheme therefore offers something valuable to the environment in which spoken word develops: stronger small venues, paid performance opportunities, support for emerging talent and investment outside the largest cultural institutions. Its value to spoken word itself is more conditional.
As the scheme develops, one question will be whether the definition of grassroots live performance expands with it. For a spoken word sector built largely through open mics, independent nights and small stages, recognition within that definition could turn venue support into a much more direct form of artistic development.
