Always on
This project successfully funded on 1st November 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
Help Phoenix Secure It’s Future!!
Woking, Surrey, United Kingdom
£7,690
raised so far
Crowdfunder is secure
Your payment details are protected
Aim
Not Closing Our Venue! Major Update & Good News, Support For A Future
Let’s Give Fiery Bird the Future It Deserves!
New Update! You can see we have changed the reason for the funding and it is great news! We have the opportunity to stay!! Please read latest update we have 6 Days Left!
Fiery Bird and the Phoenix Cultural Centre CIC has no choice but to close its Goldsworth Road venue. With no future venue identified causing a loss of funding, high utility bills, we face this closure with immense sadness — but we want our last season here to be full of music, community, and careful protection of the assets we have built up in this professionally equipped live music venue & cultural centre to provide a legacy that can still support our community.
This Crowdfunder helps us stay open until January 2026, honour every final booking, especially the crucial charity fundraisers for other groups who desperately need funding too. It will support the people and groups who rely on us to transition to new spaces and those who are training in sound & light engineering for future careers. It will also help us to protect the valuable venue equipment that remain community assets into storage whilst we evaluate the next steps.
Funding Goal at a Glance:
- £20,000 → Keep the venue open through January 2026, honour all bookings, including fundraisers for other valuable local charities, and provide a safe transition for community groups to find other spaces to support their vulnerable clients.
- £30,000 → Everything above plus support for young trainees in sound & light engineering, storage of community assets venue equipment.
After 15 years of music, learning, laughter and community, we’ve reached the final chapter.
Not because we want to — but because the road is closing ahead of us.
Phoenix Cultural Centre CIC — the community-led organisation behind Fiery Bird, Woking’s only grassroots live music venue — is preparing to close.
We’re asking for the chance to finish this chapter properly — with music, colour, community and protection of the valuable professional industry standard, in-venue infrastructure assets we have built over the years and used for gigs/training/events. To plan the next steps for the organisation and the professional in-venue infrastructure to be protected and stored during that time.
This is our last dance in Goldsworth Rd. And we’d love you to be part of it.
A Place That Gave People a Stage — and a Voice
Our music venue inside Phoenix, Fiery Bird, has always been more than a venue. It’s been a space where people could gather, express themselves, and feel welcome. We’ve supported creative growth, social connection, and inclusion — all under one roof, and always on our own terms.
It’s been:
- A space for all ages, backgrounds, cultures to enjoy, create and perform — from first-timers to seasoned artists
- A training ground where young people gained confidence and developed real skills leading to further education & training
- A platform for emerging talent and international touring acts
- A safe, inclusive venue for LGBTQ+ people, disabled visitors, and anyone who needed a place to belong
- A launchpad for those without access, networks or privilege — offering opportunity and support
All of it made possible by a grassroots team powered by lived experience, not profit.
Why We’re Closing
We’ve fought to keep going. But we’ve endured 11 break-ins, rising costs, and ongoing building issues. Our short lease has made long-term funding impossible. And earlier this year, the council sold the permanent venue we were promised and advised there is no alternative long term space to move into.
This organisation was set up by local residents to secure a building by and for the community in Woking Town Centre for all that we can give and for the community to be able to make the events and things happen that they felt would benefit everyone.
We’ve explored every option.
So now, we’re planning a managed closure — and we want to finish with pride, not silence.
What This Last Dance Can Still Achieve
We’re raising £30,000 to keep Fiery Bird open through to January 2026, and to support the people who rely on it through the venue’s final season.
With £20,000, we can:
- Honour all final bookings — gigs, exhibitions, workshops, and support groups, including some important fundraisers put on by local charities to support their work.
- Provide a safe and gentle transition for the people and organisations who depend on us and whose clients need to have time to move.
- Deliver a final season that reflects everything Fiery Bird has stood for — full of energy, care, and community
If we reach £30,000, we can also:
- Support young people finishing training in sound, lighting and event production
- Find safe storage for our extensive venue infrastructure equipment that is a community asset whilst we evaluate the next steps.
- Share the community-led venue model we’ve developed — so others can build on what we started.
This Has Always Been About People
Fiery Bird has been where voices cracked, then soared. Where someone anxious stood in front of a mic and felt a room listening. Where the quietest person in the room became the one holding the spotlight.
It’s been messy, joyful, scrappy, inclusive — and beautifully human.
We’re proud of what we built. Now, we want to close it the way we ran it: with intention, solidarity, and love.
How You Can Help
- Donate what you can
- Share the campaign with friends, artists, allies
- Come to the final shows — help us send it off the way it deserves
Let’s Go Out the Way We Came In — Together
If Fiery Bird has ever made you feel seen, safe, inspired or connected — this is your moment to stand with us.
Let’s honour the work.
Let’s celebrate the people.
Let’s make the ending unforgettable.
Not quietly. Not with a whisper.
But with a standing ovation.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made