New premises & fundraising update
We’re thrilled to be finalising a new location for our community venue expansion but need to raise £52,000 to make it happen!
Boom Leeds will close on Millwright Street at the end of March 2025.
In November we announced that Boom will be closing in March 2025. Currently, Boom is located within Byron Street Mills on Millwright Street in Leeds. Our current landlord has decided to terminate our lease to start work on developing the building into flats & shops.
You can read more about our closure statement here. If you are fully up to date, read below to find out about our new premises and fundraising update.
Our New Premises
Before Christmas, we formally offered to take on a building on the fringe of Leeds City Centre. The building is larger than our current location. It will allow us to establish and grow a fantastic Community Interest Company (CIC) model music venue with education, community facilities and more.
We will protect everything we have built over the last decade including the scenes and communities that use our spaces, the bands and gigs we work with and all the connected businesses involved. Boom has been through a pandemic, a cost of living crisis and many challenges in recent years - we’ve learnt a lot, especially about how our organisation needs to be more resilient and how that looks and works with a fresh start.
The new location will provide facilities, encouragement and development for our community, and this has been our focus at every level when designing the new venue, its team, operation and objectives with education embedded throughout.
As we look into the future, the building will offer much potential for supporting and promoting our community of music. Our roadmap for the future includes:
Permanent Rehearsal Rooms
Bookable Rehearsal Spaces
Backline & Equipment Hire
Recording Studio
A small music venue & events space
A large music venue & events space
Education Programmes & Partnerships
A permanent Bar & Food Offering
A programme of grassroots gigs & festivals promoted in-house
Fundraising Update
Thanks to the dedicated support of our community, fundraising is off to a strong start. Since November our community has come together to both organise and attend gigs, contribute to the Christmas prize draw and purchase merchandise from our web store.
So far we have raised £30,000 - we can’t thank you enough.
There have been so many bands, promoters, customers, friends and family pushing to help Boom achieve that figure. We are thrilled so many of you appreciate the value of what Boom offers and stand with us to achieve our mission.
What’s next? For us to confidently move forward and sign for the new location we need support to raise a further £52,000. The impact made so far should help us surpass the target and secure a venue which will continue to develop long into the future.
How we are now fundraising...
Read on below to find out what we’re up to, and how you can help us continue our legacy.
The most important CrowdFunder we’ll ever do!
COVID forced us to launch CrowdFunders to keep Boom open. We tested the water over Christmas to see how effective a CrowdFunder could be - we raised £2800 in just over a week. In our financial plans, we’ve set a target of £15,000 from a Crowdfunder. Donating to this CrowdFunder is the most effective way of supporting us right now!
Vinyl Record & Tape Releases
Boom is about to drop extremely limited live set compilations and special releases of your favourite sets from the venue. Bands & labels are being kind to offer live sets captured at Millwright Street. The first release coming in early February.
Merchandise & Collaborations
We’ve partnered with some of your favourite artists in our scene to release exclusive Boom merch over the next few weeks.Mystery Merch Bundles
We printed a hell of a lot of merchandise during the pandemic. We now hold a lot of spare items, some may consider dead stock. Some of this has been donated to charities within our local area and the rest will be available to you for one last time.
Introducing our mystery bundles, for £20 you’ll receive 5 t-shirts in the post. We have merch from H2o, Agnostic Front, Gel, World Of Pleasure, Cro Mags, Napalm Death and dozens more bands up for grabs, as well as some Boom originals. We get to raise money and clear out the upstairs storage and you get a bunch of quality mystery t-shirts!Even more benefit gigs and lineups!
We’ve been dropping all-dayer lineups, one-offs and last-minute dates here, there and everywhere. But we have more! Keep an eye out for more benefit shows and all-dayers - picking up tickets in advance HERE really helps.Investment & Funding
Some individuals and businesses have expressed interest in supporting what we do. Any investment is a cultural investment. We will continue these conversations and start new ones in our goal to raise funds. We are also connecting with public and organisation funding.
Education
Our technical team are currently collaborating with education providers in the city to launch a series of initiatives and partnerships for local students, young persons and those involved in grassroots music. We are currently looking to build our team of touring and technical professionals who have an interest in developing and supporting our programmes. If you would like to discuss further please contact us.
Volunteers, skills & labour
Earlier this month we put out a call for help to assist with our marketing and fundraising efforts for the new venue. The response was great! At the time we had people in our community expressing their interest in offering skills such as joinery, labouring, driving and more.
If you think you can help us with our upcoming refurbishment and moving to the new location please get in touch. We are especially looking for electricians, plumbers and joiners.
A Sneak Peak
We will of course do a full tour and grand reveal of the new location. For now, take a look at a few of the mockups from our recent work.
