Partner Article

One Stage, Infinite Seats: A New Era For Inclusive Live Performance

As the UK’s grassroots live-music scene weathers its toughest year in decades, Live to your Living Room has unveiled a new approach designed to help independent venues reach bigger, more inclusive audiences and, in the process, secure their futures.

Live to your Living Room – the UK leader in accessible hybrid live performance – has debuted the ONEAudience Method™: a new framework that venues can implement simply, efficiently, and affordably to make live experiences more inclusive, connected, and sustainable for everyone.

The announcement comes at a critical time for the UK’s live music sector. Findings from the Music Venues Trust earlier this year showed that the UK lost a grassroots venue every fortnight in 2024, while more than 40% operated at a loss. With rising rents, insurance, and energy costs combined with ticket revenues dropping by 13.5%, the picture painted shows just how desperately change is needed for the sector.

With the launch of the ONEAudience Method™, Live to your Living Room’s team hopes it can offer an antidote to the suffering the industry is facing.

Developed by Live to your Living Room co-founders, Cat McGill and Pete Ord – who boast a combined 40 years working in the music scene – and made possible by Arts Council England funding, the ONEAudience Method™ is built around three core pillars: Connection, Quality, and Inclusion. Giving venues a step-by-step way to design hybrid events that feel genuinely shared both in-person and online, the approach reimagines what it means to be ‘in the room’ and prompts both venues and promoters to prioritise audience journeys equally.

Drawing on five years of data and feedback from hundreds of professionally run hybrid gigs, it helps organisers recreate the atmosphere, energy, and sense of belonging that define live performance; ensuring grassroots venues can expand capacity, improve access, and engage fans who might otherwise never step over their threshold. Early results are compelling: 80% of artists who performed with Live to your Living Room in 2021–22 sold more tickets when they returned in 2024–25, demonstrating that well-designed hybrid events grow audiences rather than dilute them.

Rather than taking people out of venues, the method aims to bring more people in – digitally and physically – while strengthening artists’ reach and venue revenues.

Pete explains:

“All too often, we see venues approach hybrid events as an afterthought, neglecting the customer journey and therefore missing out on huge opportunities to connect and engage audiences. With our ONEAudience Method™, we want to show that hybrid isn’t about buying the most impressive tech; it’s about people. It’s about making every moment feel shared, whether you’re in the room or watching from home. When you capture that feeling of being there, it stops being two audiences and becomes one community.”

The ONEAudience Method™ directly addresses the needs of ‘forgotten audiences’: people excluded from traditional live events due to geography, disability, caring responsibilities, or financial barriers. Audience insights show that disabled people, carers, and transgender audiences are significantly over-represented in Live to your Living Room’s hybrid gigs compared to the general UK population – clear evidence that these formats are already reaching those who struggle most to attend in person.

For many, hybrid events are more than convenience: they’re essential. One audience member shared: “These gigs have enabled me to see so many musicians I would otherwise not get to see. I am disabled and find travelling too arduous – it’s wonderful being able to see gigs from my own home.”

By helping venues bring together in-person and online audiences, the ONEAudience Method™ reconnects people who have been excluded from live performance and offers the sector a scalable, sustainable way to build a stronger sense of belonging across communities.

Cat adds:

“We wholeheartedly believe that hybrid shouldn’t mean second-best: done well, it’s a bridge that connects artists and audiences locally, nationally, and even globally. As an Autistic and Disabled artist, I’ve seen how easily people can be left out of live culture: often unintentionally. Now, we’re giving venues the tools and confidence to build in access from the start, not add it later.

We’ve spent five years perfecting a model that proves you can prioritise inclusion and still have a sustainable business model; in fact, they both support the other. The ONEAudience Method™ gives venues the tools to grow capacity, diversify income and make the arts truly accessible.”

To find out more, visit https://livetoyourlivingroom.com/introducing-the-oneaudience-method/.  

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Claire Bryson .