A North Shields health and safety expert has combined more than 20 years of professional experience with a lifelong passion for live music to launch an innovative digital platform designed to raise safety standards across the music, events and night-time economy sectors.
Mark Elliott, who runs the grassroots live music venue The Engine Room in North Shields alongside his business partner, has created Gigsavvy — a digital compliance and training platform aimed at helping venues, promoters, engineers and event organisers improve health and safety compliance, workforce training and operational accountability.
By day, Mark works as a health and safety trainer, assessor and advisor, delivering training across sectors including oil and gas, construction, engineering, manufacturing and renewables, both in the UK and internationally. But outside work, music has always played a central part in his life.
“I realised years ago that a lot of touring bands were bypassing the North East, going from Manchester straight to Glasgow and missing Newcastle completely, so I started promoting gigs myself. That developed into some larger events and even small festivals, then came artist management and eventually opening a small grassroots music venue in North Shields.”
The Engine Room, with a capacity of around 60 people, has built a reputation as one of the region’s most respected intimate music venues, attracting both emerging artists and established performers looking to reconnect with smaller audiences. Artists including Tom Robinson, Bernard Butler and Wreckless Eric have performed there — with Wreckless Eric reportedly describing it as one of his favourite small venues.
“There’s still a place for grassroots venues. They’re hugely important for developing artists and creating live music communities, so preserving those spaces matters.”
Through his involvement in live events, Mark began noticing gaps in how health and safety procedures were managed across the music and night-time economy sectors.
“You’ve got people and workers moving between venues constantly — engineers, crews, promoters, bands — and sometimes things can become a bit too informal. When you look at live events properly, there are real risks involved. People are working at height, working with electricity, building stages and lighting rigs. A lot of the same principles from industries like oil and gas and construction apply, but the culture around safety in some live event spaces and the night-time economy hasn’t always kept pace.”
That experience led Mark to develop Gigsavvy — a digital compliance and training platform tailored specifically to the music, events and night-time industries. The platform offers IOSH-approved bitesize e-learning courses covering health and safety, security awareness, equality, diversity and inclusion, safeguarding and neurodiversity, alongside digital risk assessment tools, incident reporting, compliance monitoring and a verified directory of trained professionals working within the sector.
The idea attracted support from both Innovate UK and Creative UK, who helped fund the project.
“Gigsavvy brings together accredited training and compliance tools in one place — so venues, event organisers and night-time businesses have everything they need to keep their people safe and demonstrate they’re taking it seriously. It works for a sixty-capacity grassroots venue like ours, but it scales right up to larger venues or festivals with potentially thousands of people attending.”
The platform is also designed to help businesses across the night-time economy navigate an increasingly complex regulatory landscape, including the forthcoming implementation of Martyn’s Law following the Manchester Arena bombing.
While those leading the development of Martyn’s Law have been clear that specific training will not be made mandatory under the legislation, existing health and safety regulations already place a legal duty on employers to ensure their workforce is competent and that risks are properly managed. For many venues and night-time operators, that duty has not always been fully met, as some events have clearly indicated.
“Martyn’s Law is a significant moment for the sector, and it’s right that venues prepare for it. But it’s important to be clear — training under Martyn’s Law is not yet stated as mandatory. What is required, under existing health and safety law, is that employers demonstrate competence and that they’ve properly assessed and managed the risks their people face. That obligation exists now, regardless of Martyn’s Law. Gigsavvy applies straightforward measures to meet that duty and evidence that you’ve done it.”
As the platform prepares for wider rollout, Mark is in discussion with several industry organisations and training providers about partnership opportunities — with the goal of making quality, accessible safety training a standard part of how the live events and night-time economy sectors operate.
“I’ve spent twenty years training managers and workers to stay safe in some of the most hazardous industries in the world. The live events and night-time economy deserve the same standard of safety thinking — and now there’s a platform built specifically to help deliver it. Grassroots venues are the heartbeat of the live music industry. If Gigsavvy helps protect even a handful of them by making compliance less daunting and more accessible, that’s exactly what it’s here to do.
Photo: (Steve Brock Photography)
Pr and media keith@highlightspr.co.uk 07814 397951