THE AMPLIFIED SOUND COALITION
Advocates for the performance venue community, focusing on Survival, Sustainability, and Safety.
Responsibility and Sacrifice: these are the values the event industry has illustrated since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns. In the “Live Music Capital of the World,” Austinites have felt the ramifications of the core identity of the city’s culture begin to disappear as a result of venue owners and festival producers following the safety orders of remaining closed.
We believe it’s time to address this critical moment in our community, and bring the dangerous aspects of prolonged unemployment, indefinite closures of venues and festivals, as well as the uncertainty of the survival of our linked community and identities, to light.
AUSTIN, TEXAS T.A.S.C. FORCE
The Big Three
The Amplified Sound Coalition (TASC) is a community-based organization made up of industry professionals and concerned citizens. We have identified and want to address, publicly, three aspects of our community that are the most at-risk:
Financial Sustainability. This includes, but is not limited to, having jobs within our industry that we can return to once it is safe to do so. Dedicated funding for performance venues is key to this risk, with focus given to fair and transparent requirements, open and community-based allocation of any funds made available, as well as the swift dispersal of said funds.
Mental and Physical Well-Being. Our community is suffering. Our careers, jobs, and, as a result, identities have been taken by no fault of our own. Access to both physical and mental healthcare has become increasingly difficult due to loss of wages and insurance plans. TASC is dedicated to developing new options, as well as working with existing entities (such as SIMS and/or HAAM) to ensure the health impacts of the pandemic and subsequent shutdowns are addressed, ensuring the survival of our community.
Austin Housing and Cost of Living. During this time of unprecedented economic disaster, a magnifying glass has been brought to the local housing crisis and cost-of-living inequities affecting the event labor community. TASC wants to explore possibilities within our community to ease these high costs to both workers and venue owners, looking specifically at affordable housing options, property tax initiatives for industry workers/venue owners (extending to the musicians), and addressing wages, insurance options, as well as independent contractor complications that arise across the industry.
“Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.”
Plato
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