Jamming Station: Totnes venue, music hub and lifeline for young people launches £50,000 “do-or-die” appeal

A youth music project has launched a £50,000 appeal to transform its venue.

The appeal will fund essential fire safety work, a new PA and lighting system, and soundproofing, rising to a fully equipped youth venue with sensory spaces, an employability café and training facilities at higher funding levels at the Jamming Station in Totnes.

The Devon venue known as the Town Mill “is part youth club, part rehearsal room, part training ground for the music industry” for young people. according to a press release.

You can contribute to the appeal here .

Jamming Station co-director Jacqui Perks said: “For many of our young people, this is the place where they finally find their tribe.

They come out of school carrying all that pressure and enter an environment where they can unwind among other young musicians who see them, understand them and accept them.

“In a band, everybody has a part to play.

You have to listen to each other and keep going when something doesn’t work.

Those are music skills, but they’re also life skills.” The Town Mill CREDIT: Eliot Ely It began in 2012 when Perks and fellow musicians Beth Coombes and Lee Friese-Greene started loading amps into cars each week because “their children had nowhere in Totnes to play”.

Former Jamming Station student Izzi Warburton has gone on to tour internationally as a session musician, with the likes of Primal Scream and Kula Shaker .

“I’m incredibly grateful to Jamming Station for what it gave me as an artist and producer.

Since leaving when I was about 18, I’ve been fortunate enough to tour the world as a musician and work in studios across the UK,” he said.

Izzi Warburton CREDIT: Jamming Station “It is so important that young people have somewhere they can get off their phones, connect with each other properly and become absorbed in something creative.

Making music is deeply educational, and I really hope people get behind this appeal so Jamming Station can give many more young people the opportunities it gave me.” Meanwhile, The Music Venue Trust recently reported that that 30 grassroots music venues closed forever between July 2024 and July 2025 while 48 stopped operating as gig spaces .