Krakatoa operates differently from most other businesses.
Black Cat Worker Collective is a registered non-profit, incorporated as an asset locked community interest company limited by guarantee. There are no shareholders or beneficial owners. Our stated community purpose is to enhance the local grassroots music scene:
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC562036
The business is in equal and collective ownership, operates as a non-hierarchal worker cooperative under the principle of One Worker One Vote, and is a member of the International Cooperative Alliance:
https://www.uk.coop/directory/black-cat-aberdeen
We do not believe that music should be marketed as ancillary to booze, which is why we levy a reasonable admission charge to each concert. All of our cultural activity is ring-fenced, and any surplus generated from those admission receipts can only be used to fund our music programme. As such we qualify for cultural exemption from VAT under Cultural exemption legislation – Group 13, Schedule 9 VAT Act 1994:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/admission-charges-to-cultural-events-and-vat-notice-70147
At grassroots level, 100% of those admission receipts are paid to the artists who perform at those concerts.
The venue has never taken a cut of the artists’ merchandise sales, nor do we charge for a merch stall, even though said provision reduces our audience capacity. We were among the first to sign up to the FAC 100% Venues Charter:
https://thefac.org/venuedirectory
Our organisation benefits from non-profit lease, with the entirety of our ‘rent’ reinvested in fabric of the venue. This enables us to rely on exclusively on bar sales to cover our overheads and pay our wages. Beyond that we also choose to reinvest a significant portion of any bar surplus into our music programme each year.
In 2022 we allocated the entire bar surplus towards funding the following:
- £15K invested in additional live streaming equipment.
- £35K invested in AV recording, editing and mixing equipment, that artists can use to produce their own EPKs etc.
- £8K invested in a 12-way wireless IEM system, capable of producing 4 separate stereo images.
- £5K invested in a replacing our drum kit with a top of the range model.
- £2K spent on repairing the rest of our backline and replacing mic stands and cables.
- £1K invested in vastly upgraded vocal microphones.
That amounted to an additional £66K of reinvestment, over and above what was directly generated by ring-fenced cultural activity.
In 2023 we have thus far allocated bar surplus towards funding the following:
- £600 invested in a 32-in 8-out stage box.
- £8.5K invested in an additional dLive mixer ordered to improve the audio on our livestreams.
- £2K invested in upgraded drum mics.
- £11K invested in studio mics, high fidelity preamps (16 channels), and other components to facilitate studio recordings.
That amounts to a further £22.1K to this year to date.
Over the course of the past 18 month Black Cat Worker collective has allocated £88.1K of Krakatoa’s bar surplus towards our community purpose.
In summary: Black Cat Worker Collective is a bona fide non-profit organisation, specifically setup to support music at a grassroots level, and not a private company incorporated for profit. That is what sets us apart.