We back the little guy
Small music venues, pubs, independent shops, market traders, festival committees and town volunteers are being squeezed from every direction, and the official tourism bodies cannot help at town level. The West List exists to put bums on seats and feet through doors for the businesses nobody else promotes.
How this works
Listings are free
Anyone can add an event, at no cost, forever. Paying for a featured slot buys prominence and nothing else: never a better review, never a followed link, never a place we would not have listed anyway. Paid placement always carries a Featured label.
A person checks everything
Every submission is read by a human before it appears. We would rather have a short list that is true than a long one that is not. If a field is missing we leave it out rather than guess at it.
We credit our sources
When we pick up an event from a venue, council or tourism site, we say so and link back. We would rather send you to the organiser than keep you here. Link generously, be the plumbing, not the rival.
Who runs it
Backing the little guy, right across the West
The West List is run by Jim Chetwode, a digital marketing veteran of thirty years who has spent the last eight building websites for towns across the South West: Visit Shaftesbury, Langport Life, Castle Cary and the Hungerford town app among them. Every one of those sites promotes local events, independent shops and small businesses, because that’s what keeps a town alive.
Jim also chairs the Shaftesbury & District Chamber of Commerce, which means he sees the other side of the story too: small venues struggling to fill rooms, volunteer-run festivals with no marketing budget, and community what’s-on sites quietly dying as public money dries up.
The West List is the answer to a simple question: what if all of it was connected? One site for the whole South West, where every market, gig, festival, food fair and village event can be found, and where every small business can be seen, for free.
How we keep the lights on, in plain English. Listing is free. In time, once the site has earned a real audience, we’ll offer paid featured placement and advertising, and anything paid-for will always be clearly labelled. What we will never do is charge a struggling venue just to exist on the internet.
Get involved. List your event or business free. Sign up to The West List Weekly for what’s on near you. And if you’ve got ideas for what this site should become, or you want to bring your town into the network, get in touch. This only works as a team effort.
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