Phoenix Named Best Community Arts & Cultural Space 2026 - Surrey

As we signed to extend our lease for another two years in Woking, we were delighted to find out that we had been awarded Best Community Arts & Cultural Space 2026 - Surrey by SME News. 

The award is based on their research into our organisation and what we do, regardless of the challenges that come our way. We don’t self-nominate the organisation for awards, simply because if we had the time to do that, we would put it to more fundraising, more events, more people, so it is lovely to have that news as we embark on our final years in temporary premises

As residents who set this up 15 years ago, and continue to work on it until we secure the building we set out to do, we know the social, cultural and economic benefits a place like ours has for its own, and wider communities. 

The growing issues we identified from our work in Community Learning and Development over 30 years, as well as music and arts in our early proposals, have become so much more prevalent today: young people out of work and training, lack of spaces to offer skills, training, apprenticeships in an area at the heart of the creative industries where there is a shortage of those skills. A lack of a platform for new grassroots creative work where mistakes are made, innovation is encouraged, and confidence and craft grow. For wellbeing and the arts economy that contributes so much to our country and our county, heritage and future. Cultural sharing to increase understanding not schisms between communities, postcodes. Widening wealth and opportunity gaps, anti-social behaviour and lack of youth provision, social opportunities for those who feel isolated or outside the opportunities others take for granted and neutral spaces.  

We have seen Cultural Centres incorporating Grassroots Music Venues successfully established in so many places, given guidance to others setting up new community venues like ours who are also starting from nothing just the issues they live or see neighbours living, experience and conviction. They are also from the ground up and now thriving where we have not taken hold. We have contributed to policy and research in the UK and abroad and believe that our home town, Woking deserves the same. 

It is community founded and led, non affiliated and always will be, to always reflect our community as it grows and changes throughout the years.

A launchpad, platform, place to celebrate, innovate and share, where community wealth increases in the true sense of the word. Wellbeing, economic power, opportunities and skills being shared, all being reinvested in our community for the benefit of all, every age, every background, every life experience.