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Panic over: The Cellar will not be closing down after all

Phew


The Cellar night club, one of Europe's oldest live music venues off Cornmarket Street will no longer be closing down in December, after raising over £80,000 in a five week crowdfunding campaign.

The success of the crowdfunding campaign will enable The Cellar to build a new fire exit, after inspection undertaken by Oxfordshire City Council earlier in the year revealed that the club's 70cm fire escape was to too narrow by 30cm.

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The crowdfunding campaign has seen support from a number of artists and band members such as Philip Selway, dummer of Radiohead and Gaz Coombes, lead vocalist of Supergrass.

This campaign isn't the first The Cellar have launched either. In 2017, 14,000 people signed a petition in order to keep the venue open after Lush cosmetics (the previous occupants above The Cellar) wanted to shut down the basement club and use it as a storage space instead.

Thanks to the money raised, The Cellar are hoping to start building work in January 2019, and the new fire exit has the potential to increase the club's capacity to over 200 people. Long live The Cellar.