Help Secure the Future of The Phoenix Arts Club – An Independent Home for theatre in 2025.
For over three decades, The Phoenix Arts Club has been the beating heart of London’s independent theatre scene — a space where creativity, connection, and community thrive. Welcoming over 100,000 guests each year, hosting hundreds of shows (almost 1,000!), and proudly paying out over £3million in the last 5 years alone to creative practitioners working in all areas of live entertainment. The venue now operates as a “not for profit” Community Interest” Company (CIC), ensuring all monies are put to good use, protecting this vital space.
Photo Credit: Cam Harle
Recovering from the pandemic, our Phoenix Arts Club successfully delivered an Arts Council England Grant, scaling up audio-visual capabilities and completing a 2 year project to support the staging of theatre: training opportunities, subsidised hires and running of our Daytime Creative Hub.
Our aim for 2025 is to see our projects continue, but with no current funding commitments in place, and costs continuing to soar, we need your help! Our annual "shortfall" from running the venue to its full extent each year is £125,000. Phase 1 of our 2025 fundraising efforts aims to raise £60,000 through membership and your kind donations.
So please contribute to this fundraiser by becoming a Member and receiving a perk or two to ensure this iconic venue continues to not just support, but expand its support of new works for 2025.
Why We Need Your Support
Raising £60,000 will help us:
- Protect a vital space for theatre-makers, cabaret artists, and the creative community.
- Continue paying artists a fair wage ensuring revenue directly supports performers. In the last five years we've paid out over £3million to creative practitioners. We are proud to be London Living Wage Employers.
- Expand our community work, offering a platform for emerging talent and theatre professionals. This 2025 we want to bring 10 new works of theatre from page to stage with paid research and development time, directorial, marketing and producing support, rounding off with a live 'showcase' in our Club.
- Invest in the venue so it remains a welcoming space for you, our artistic family, including upgrading our 'backline' by installing a baby grand piano, upgrading our staging and purchasing a set of theatre specific headset microphones.
How You Can Help
By contributing to our fundraiser, you're supporting both the venue and everyone who walks through its doors, and we ensure every penny raised from membership & donations goes toward our charitable work. The raising of these much needed funds will ensure us to meet and exceed on on all we achieved in 2024.
Please take a moment to read our 2024 show highlights.
2024 HIGHLIGHTS AT THE PHOENIX ARTS CLUB
MUSICAL THEATRE & LIVE MUSIC
Pictured: Taylor Jay Productions' Spring Awakening. Photo by Danny Kaan.
We welcomed two week long theatre productions of Musicals RENT and SPRING AWAKENING, as well as a short run of the hit off-broadway show EDGES.
Taylor Jay Productions' week long run of TITLE OF SHOW went on to great success, transferring to The Southwark Playhouse.
The Scissor Sisters reunited for the first time in over ten years on The Phoenix Arts Club stage as they joined frontman Jake Shears for a special recording of the hit podcast Queer the Music.
Plus we welcomed Netflix & Broadway star Tituss Burgess' for a two week run of their work in progress show 'The Indecisive Warrior', featuring special guests TikTok star Aron The Guitar Baron and MOBO Winner Laura Mvula.
Pictured: Lambert Jackson Productions: Tituss Burgess. Photo Credit: Danny Kaan.
PLUS we welcomed shows including Flo & Joan's One Man Musical (transferring to the West End!), Mickey-Jo LIVE, PULSE the Zombie Musical, a monthly late-night residencey from West End Royalty Jon Robyns, new musical YOU AND I, Tik Tok Star Henry Calvert, Emily Kitsch, Matt Bateman's from Stoke to the Spotlight, Chad St Louis, Lee Van Galeen, Karen Wilkinson, Jordan Charles, Festoon Theatre, Little Fiend the Musical, Flat Earth the Musical, My Name is Gef, RepresentAsian, The Savoy Cabaret, AKA's Staff Talent Night, Associated Studios, and to top it off the reunion for the original cast of 42nd Street & The West End Wendies Reunion.
CABARET
The Lady Ratlings Fundraiser, The British Music Hall Society's Birthday, Sarah-Louise Young, Eliza Delite Presents..., City Academy's Burlesque Showcase, London Performance Prep, Marcel Lucont's Cabaret Fantastique, Greystone Media, Stagecoach, Son of a Tutu, THE AUDITION, Joe Black, Katie Pritchard, The Trawlerman, Virgin x, Vinegar Strokes, Magician Thomas Turner, Holly Stars, Tracey Collins, Dr Sketchy, Ada Campe, Dusty Limits, Madame Chandelier, The House of Pantha, Canadh (a collaborative showcase of emerging Irish and Irish trained talent living in London), Dom Pipkin's Sweet Sounds of New Orleans, Graham Cole OBE, Robin Askwith.
COMEDY
Works in progress from the UK's leading comedians included Kevin Bridges, Al Murray, Luke Kempner Fatiha El-Ghorri, Stephen Merchant, Jack Dee, Juliette Burton, André de Freitas, Greg Davies, Ali Woods & Holly & Brooke. Grubby Little Mitts, Beyond the Palette, Comedy Therapy, Tamara Stuart, Pitchblack Playback, Jay Rayner, Misty Moon, The Comic Strip, Tony Slattery, The Red Dwarf Reunion, Paul Chuckle and many more.