Start today with the announcement that Beyoncé’s BeyGood foundation is donating $6m to various community-based organisations, UCLA and the National Alliance in Mental Illness. “Communities of color are suffering by epic proportions due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” pointed out the foundation’s announcement. “These are unprecedented times, and it will take our collective efforts to make a difference.”
Elsewhere, crowdfunding platform Kickstarter has launched a ‘Lights On‘ initiative designed to help cultural spaces – including music venues – stay in business while closed due to the pandemic. Kickstarter is bending its rules on campaigns having to ‘create something new’ to make its platform work for these venues.
There’s some positive news from the UK too: Foo Fighters, BMG and Kobalt are donating the royalties from a cover of the band’s ‘Times Like These’ by a group of stars to charities. The cover was organised by BBC Radio 1 under its ‘Live Lounge’ banner.
Hats off to The Weeknd too, who’s thrown his weight behind a campaign to get 99 year-old war veteran Captain Tom Moore (who has raised nearly £29m so far for NHS charities by walking in his garden) to number one in the singles chart this week. His duet with Michael Ball is duking it out with The Weeknd’s ‘Blinding Lights’, but the Canadian artist is encouraging Brits to buy the rival track instead.
Finally, we’re enjoying The Social Gathering, the brainchild of London venue The Social, nature-writing website Caught By The River and publisher White Rabbit Books. It’s a “virtual music and literature broadsheet” that’s aiming to “provide an escape from this traumatic time through books and music while advocating for physical distance”. Playlists, articles and after-work ‘drinks’ and DJ sets included.
Image by JStone / Shutterstock.com
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