What is Lockdown Presents?
Lockdown Presents (www.lockdownpresents.com) is a platform that connects audiences with professional musicians for private virtual live concerts. Our mission is to support the arts during lockdown by creating paid work opportunities for performers, and to connect people at this socially distanced time through the power of live music. 80% of fees go directly to the artists and all profits are donated to charity .
Our artists are all top-class performers who would otherwise be playing in West End theatres, orchestras, weddings and gigs, and bossing open mics nights.
We take bookings for individuals, corporates, care homes, communities and more (we've had book clubs, choirs, WI groups and more). A virtual concert is perfect for creating special virtual events, and a unique gift idea – bringing live music and performances into people's homes, while supporting local artists and raising money for charity.
The platform allows users to:
Choose an artist based on their profile and reviews
Pick their favourite songs or pieces from their repertoire, choose a pre-curated set, or let the artist choose the songs
Book a slot for a virtual live performance from 15 to 45 minutes
Invite their friends, families or colleagues to enjoy with them on Zoom.
Our core mission is to create magical moments through the joy of live music, and help the arts thrive, not just survive, during this period of change. We want to create new paid work opportunities for musicians and our aim is to maximise income for performers.
Lockdown Presents is run by a small volunteer team with 80% of booking fees and 100% of tips going directly to the artists. The 20% covers the costs of running the platform and any profit we make is donated to our charities; Mind, Age UK and Refuge.
Read the full story here.
We donate to charities aimed at dealing with the fallout from a world in lockdown. We feel this is particularly important right now, as charity income is down an estimated 30-50% as a result of closed charity stores and cancelled fundraising events. The charities we currently support are Age UK, Refuge, and Mind.
We receive bookings for all kinds of occasions. When a musician gets booked through the website, they receive an email with all of the details shared by the customer, including what the occasion is, the name of the recipient, any requests from your repertoire, and whether or not it is a surprise.
To give you a flavour of the sorts of concerts we have done, here are some examples:
Virtual birthday celebrations, especially milestones (90th, 100th, 30ths, 18th, we've had them all!). It's really heartwarming to help people connect with loved ones all around the world
Get togethers - groups of music lovers wanting to do something unique, often groups of friends who would usually go to concerts together
Gifts - private concerts make a great unique and personal gift. Often the recipient will invite a few others to join
Team events - anything from whole-company Christmas parties of 200 people, to small team lunches, and breaks in training days / virtual conferences
Quizzes - people love a music quiz! Whether it's for a virtual hen do, birthday, team event or just family fun
