This information gives a more formal flavour of how the club operated in 2022-2023. The more formal element is in our company accounts, with a link below.
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The year ending August 31 2023 was the first full year of operation without restrictions for the Vortex Jazz club since the Covid-19 pandemic. Some residual effects were still observed with net gig income remaining slightly depressed at the start of the year before recovering strongly later in the latter part of the year. The venue hosted 16,849 customers to the end of the current year compared to 17,987 in the year ending Aug 2019, the last full year pre-pandemic. This is a reduction of 6.3% in the number of paying customers from the pre-pandemic figure. It is however an increase of 37.1% over the total audience for the year ending Aug 2022 and the trend was towards increased monthly audience numbers as the year progressed.The year ending August 31 2023 was the first full year of operation without restrictions for the Vortex Jazz club since the Covid-19 pandemic. Some residual effects were still observed with net gig income remaining slightly depressed at the start of the year before recovering strongly later in the latter part of the year. The venue hosted 16,849 customers to the end of the current year compared to 17,987 in the year ending Aug 2019, the last full year pre-pandemic. This is a reduction of 6.3% in the number of paying customers from the pre-pandemic figure. It is however an increase of 37.1% over the total audience for the year ending Aug 2022 and the trend was towards increased monthly audience numbers as the year progressed. The refurbishment work that was undertaken during lockdown, with the help of Arts Council and Local Government grants as well as a Crowdfunder appeal, was finally completed during the current year with the remaining building works and acquisition of a new lighting system together with some further improvements to the acoustics completing the planned spending for the club. The architect-led refurbishment has allowed the club to experiment with different formats to present music to the public exploiting the new layout, the acoustic flooring and baffles and the lighting. This has allowed the presentation to adapt to the nature and form of the event. A change in the demographics of the audience is noticeable since the end of lockdown with a significantly younger audience attending for many of the performances. This has allowed the club to further experiment with the way shows are offered to the public. The club has been able to offer two paying houses on certain nights which has increased the range of performers that can perform at the club. The downstairs space has been utilized more than in recent previous years. It has played a part in the planned increase in the number of rehearsals that make use of the venue and that has become a noticeable part of the revenue stream. There will be continued development of the downstairs space in the future to better utilize this resource.