A diagnosis, a blueprint, a conversation.
Neck of the Woods got saved. The Kings Arms didn't. Verona didn't. The Wine Cellar didn't. This isn't a run of bad luck. It's the same structural failure playing out one beloved venue at a time, in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and in comparable cities across the world. The Venue Project exists because the tools to fix this already exist. They just haven't been assembled yet.
The premise
Grassroots music venues were already running on the thinnest margins in hospitality before inflation, before the bar take started declining, before energy and labour costs compounded on top of commercial rents that kept climbing regardless. When the shock hit, they had nowhere to go.
But the shock is not the story. The story is what these places actually are, and what disappears when they close.
What these venues actually are, what disappears when they close, and the national picture behind a single Karangahape Road basement.
Neck of the Woods is not just a venue. It's where artists play their first sets before they played festivals. It's a safe space for queer communities, for Māori and Pasifika artists, for anyone who didn't feel at home in mainstream nightlife. It was where friendships formed, careers started, and a generation of Auckland music found its sound. ATARANGI, one of the artists who helped organise the fundraiser, put it plainly: the internet is not a place for culture transmission in the way that a club is.
The Kings Arms gave Auckland something similar for almost 140 years before a landlord's decision ended it. Verona anchored Karangahape Road as a gathering place. The Wine Cellar was where you went when you needed music to feel real. Each closure was mourned. None of them changed the conditions that caused the next one.
That is the problem The Venue Project is trying to solve. Not one venue. The system.
Nationwide, 2,564 hospitality businesses closed in the past twelve months, up 19% on the year before. Card spending dropped 9% in a single quarter, worst in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch. The live music sector contributed $17.3 billion in social and economic value to this country last year. And the venues generating that value are collapsing for want of a structural model that matches what they actually are: not bars with bands, but cultural infrastructure, as essential to a city as its theatres and galleries, and half as likely to receive the funding that reflects it.
"We have the opportunity to reimagine and put in place more sustainable models of operation not so tied to bar takes."
The bridge
$156,000 in a week is not a fluke. It is evidence. Donations came from San Francisco, from Melbourne, from people who had never set foot in Neck of the Woods but understood what it represented. A compilation album came together in 24 hours. A politician who started her career there opened the final night on the decks. The response was immediate, generous, and global.
But it was also a workaround. The money cleared debts and bought time. It did not change the landlord relationship, the bar take dependency, the absence of patient capital, or the lack of ownership security that created the crisis in the first place. The next venue in trouble will need another crowdfunder. And the one after that.
The advocacy layer, the ownership layer, and the models already proven in the UK, France, and Australia.
Independent Music Venues Aotearoa is already doing the policy and advocacy work: pushing for the regulatory conditions, funding access, and government settings that venues need to survive. The Venue Project is building the financial layer underneath that. The ownership structure. The community freehold. The capital mechanism that means a venue's future doesn't depend on whether its landlord decides to retire or sell.
Other countries have already built this. The UK's Music Venue Properties has raised over £7 million from more than 2,500 community investors and permanently secured more than ten venues through a community ownership model, with entry from £50 per investor. France has run a levy on live music tickets for decades, redirecting a percentage of arena revenue to the grassroots venues that built the artists filling those arenas. Australia recommended the same mechanism after a parliamentary inquiry in 2024.
None of this requires new ideas. It requires assembly.
Four chapters
Chapter one
01The full chain under pressure: venues, artists, promoters, crew, and the communities they serve.
See the squeeze →Chapter two
02The ticket levy and the community freehold. Two structural moves, both already proven.
See what's working →Chapter three
03A New Zealand legal blueprint: PropCo, OpCo, and a National Fund built from existing law.
Open the blueprint →Chapter four
04A working draft, not a finished policy. Operator, artist, investor, lawyer, music fan, bring your perspective.
Join the conversation →Every city has its version of this story. The venue that anchored a scene, launched a generation of artists, gave a community somewhere to call home, and then one day wasn't there anymore. Auckland has lost several. Wellington and Christchurch are losing theirs. Regional towns rarely even make the news when it happens.
The tools to change this exist. The community appetite to back it exists. The international precedent is there. What's missing is the structure that connects them.
That's what The Venue Project is building. And it starts with a conversation.