A fundraiser has been launched to help support Leeds venue The Imaginarium after it was forced to close suddenly last weekend.<\/p>\n
According to the announcement, the closure came after a mandate from Leeds City Council\u2019s Planning Department. The mandate arrived after being \u201canonymously reported for a planning breach\u201d. The Imaginarium team say they had already acquired a 4 AM license from Leeds City Council and informed its landlords of plans to host live music and operate as a nightclub.<\/p>\n
However, when the mandate arrived, the team were told they would have to begin the process again, which they say was already very costly, or vacate the premises.<\/p>\n
In a statement released alongside the fundraising campaign, the team commented on the licence situation: \u201cThis was a long while ago, and everything has been fine, and then this week we had a letter from the person in the council planning department who had originally contacted us, starting the whole thing again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBasically, we have 14 days to either cease operating or restart the process we went through last year,\u201d the statement continued. \u201cSo sadly, we will not be operating as a venue at Church Walk after the end of July.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we were to continue, we would have to begin the process of trying to fight this, and it will be at huge cost to ourselves, and we are unlikely to come out of it with the result we want.\u201d<\/p>\n
The GoFundMe campaign, which was launched last week, has a target of \u00a35,000, which the team hopes will ease the financial impact of the situation. The money will go towards legal fees and the cost of finding and refitting a new space, which they hope to find by 2026.<\/p>\n
On future plans, they statement said: \u201cWe will also be moving to a new space – but that is unlikely to be for several months – we are aiming for early 2026. It is a huge headache and quite heartbreaking to have to go through this, and it has scuppered a lot of our plans for this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Learn more about the fundraiser and donate, click\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n In January, Leeds club The Old Red Bus Station<\/a> announced it would be closing down due to \u201cunassailable\u201d rise in costs.<\/p>\n Over the past two years, The Wire<\/a> club and Sheaf St.<\/a> also closed their doors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A fundraiser has been launched to help support Leeds venue The Imaginarium after it was forced to close…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8814],"tags":[748,393,4884,1860,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-305963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leeds","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-leeds","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114946549020894284","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}