THE campaign week – now in its 4^th year – is set to take place 25 to 29 January and will feature online events, videos, podcasts, and blogs showcasing the history of village halls and the benefits they have derived for rural communities over the years.  

The initiative is being led nationally by Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) and echoed by the 38 county-based rural development charities which make up the ACRE Network.

Deborah Clarke, ACRE’s Rural Evidence and Village Halls Manager said:

“The past year has been one of the most challenging periods for village halls on record. Many closed due to the government’s coronavirus restrictions, yet the volunteers who manage these buildings applied for emergency funding and put in place COVID-19 Secure measures so they could carry on providing a safe space for their community when it was most needed. Village Halls Week 2021 is in many ways, a celebration of the fact these halls are true survivors!”

Managed by volunteers, England’s 10,000+ village and community halls support a diverse range of community activities from exercise classes to coffee mornings and are routinely hired out for private parties and weddings. Some host community shops and post offices.

In a survey undertaken by ACRE last year, it was found that 60% of village halls provide the only meeting space in the local community. An estimated 50,000 individuals are reliant on the use of village halls to make a living.

A row of karate kids are performing mawashi geri kicks in unison to the cries of their teacher. Coincidentally, in the room next door, the Brownies are learning first aid. The next morning, a gaggle of pensioners arrive and are soon waltzing to wartime classics. Then, by the afternoon, a jumble sale is in full swing. One week later, dozens of people are queuing up to vote, hot on the heels of a neighbourhood forum discussing a contentious planning application.

These are just a few moments in the life of a humble village hall. More than any other building type, the village hall represents the ultimate multifunctional democratic space. It is a forum for raffles, cake sales, birthday parties, fitness classes, political meetings and more – a witness, as Jethro Marshall puts it, “to great human events – mostly for around £8 per hour”.

Marshall, a Dorset-based art director and photographer, has surveyed a range of village halls across the West Country for his latest book, Halls & Oats, a celebration of what he calls “utilitarian bucolic construction”. In the midst of the pandemic, his carefully framed black and white images, devoid of human life, take on a new level of pathos. The children’s parties have stopped, the Bums and Tums classes are postponed, Knit and Natter has been put on hold. Absent of the life that sustains them, village halls have become empty shells of promise, haunting symbols of a time when we could congregate – but also hopeful reminders that we might one day do so again.