Village Halls Week success

Village Halls Week last week was great success both nationally and regionally. This article will look at a few highlights!

Village Halls Week is about celebrating England’s village halls including their volunteers and the vital services they provide their communities with.

ACRE, GRCC’s umbrella organisation, launched the week in London at the House of Commons in London, with our Community Wellbeing Service Manager, Louise Fletcher in attendance. Louise has been involved in ACRE’s Village Hall Improvement Grant and dealing with applications from Gloucestershire.

We kicked things off on social media with this quote from our CEO, Janice Banks. There was all round agreement with these words and it’s something that will continue to ring true in the future.

On Wednesday, as part of a weekly feature that we run on Instagram called Wednesday Wonders, we created a collage of every Village Hall in our Village Hall Finder, with approximately 250 featured. Wednesday Wonders celebrates all things Gloucestershire and we encourage anyone to send us your photos to feature your photo and get the recognition for your photo. If you’d like your photo featured then email us or DM us on Instagram.

Finally, on Saturday it was National Village Hall Open Day. We headed to Oakridge Village Hall to cover their open morning and was greeted with open arms by the community. You can read our Twitter thread below as we covered the morning.

We also interviewed John Loosley, who helps to run the village hall in Oakridge and is a former GRCC Trustee, who explained what the village hall offers and why it’s important: