Broad Church is Sydney’s answer to the members’ club, minus the gatekeeping
Accessible members’ club Broad Church is giving people the chance to meet up and network without the usual price tag of dealmaking.
On a rainy weeknight in Chippendale, south of Sydney’s CBD, 16 people have gathered for a book club in a new co-working space. The space is stylish – a Pro-Ject Debut Evo 2 turntable plays Miles Davis and Pop and Scott lightshades hang from the ceiling. We’re just 2km from where the city’s five-storey Soho House behemoth will open its doors in 2028 – but Broad Church is a very different proposition.
Broad Church was born of former venture-capital investor turned author Jessy Wu’s frustration with the way that dealmaking happens: primarily through personal and professional networks.
“Traditional members’ clubs feel like spaces where the interests of capital can gather,” says Wu. “But where are the spaces where ordinary people, especially those with jobs vulnerable to AI, can meet and help each other out?”
Broad Church encourages membership based not on status but on a sense of connection. Built in 1886, the premises were an ecumenical mission hall doubling as a food bank and volunteering depot, before operating as a gallery and tapas bar. “It felt like a storied space,” says Wu.
She signed a four-year lease on 1 January. Broad Church now has almost enough members to break even on the rent. It costs AU$850 (€520) a month for a dedicated seat in the co-working space and AU$550 (€337) for a three-days-a-week membership. “I’m not trying to make a profit,” says Wu.
The idea is to make Broad Church part of Sydney’s social fabric, as members’ clubs are elsewhere in the world. Still, the 31-year-old acknowledges that mitigating structural inequity is a much larger hill to climb. “I don’t purport to be fixing this with one little building in Chippendale,” she says. But it’s certainly a good start.
