Sam Dabb has been operating venues and delivering community focussed projects for the last 25 years. Under her guardianship, Lep Pub, Newport, has become renowned as one of the top venues on the UK touring circuit and has been nominated for many awards including NME Small Venue Of The Year, in which it finished third overall and first in Wales.
In 2016, when faced with closure due to the sale of the building Sam set up a co-operative and launched a Community Share Offer, enabling Le Pub to move to much bigger premises and become a multi-use artspace.
During the pandemic, Sam worked as Welsh Coordinator for the Music Venue Trust helping venues negotiate the intricacies of funding and regulations during the Covid 19 pandemic and also serves as a guru for the charity supporting venues to diversify their cultural offerings and improve best practice
In 2022 Sam was awarded the Music Venue Trust -Outstanding Achievement Award and Association Of Independent Music – Local Hero award.
Most recently, in 2023 Sam and a group of other people from the Welsh music industry came together to open a 500 capacity community owned music venue in Newport with the Community Benefit Share Offer reaching it’s target of £40,000 within 25 days of launching”