This week is Village Halls Week 2025 (17th-23rd March). It’s organised by ACRE nationally, but in North East Lincolnshire we’re doing our part this week to support local village halls across our own area.
VANEL is running a programme called Neighbourhood Networking across rural parts of North East Lincolnshire (thanks to National Lottery Reaching Communities funding). Our aim is to help more and more residents connect with each other by joining (or starting) groups and activities and connecting with what’s going on in their area. And in rural areas this usually means heading to a village hall or a community centre.
Village Halls (in whatever form they take) can be a key part of any neighbourhood, town or village. They run events and activities and share information. And they need to keep the doors open and the lights on and need to be sustainable and well supported.
Behind the scenes every village hall is usually run by volunteers. Those who form a committee; or organise and run events; make cakes; do fundraising; tidy the garden; clean the hall; respond to an alarm and so on.
So Village Halls Week this year is largely about acknowledging this volunteering effort and thanking volunteers for their time and support.
VANEL will be sharing news about the campaign week and will be talking with local village halls to try and see what they need and how we can help.
Our Rural Neighbourhood Networking programme has its own website – at www.nelwatch.org.uk/neighbourstogether
On this website you’ll find a section dedicated to community venues (including village halls, community hubs and more). Visit it here.
You’ll find profiles of many local village halls and hubs.
Perhaps you want to join in with something – so find out what a venue near you offers. Perhaps you have an idea to start a group, event or activity – in which case you might need to find somewhere to hold it, so look for what the venues offer. Maybe you’re involved with one of these hubs – in which case help us make sure your details are right on our website and we’ll help you promote yourself. (Or we can have conversations about funding, volunteers, sustainability or more).
The VANEL programme is covering: Immingham; Wolds; Waltham; Humberston and New Waltham wards, as well as Great Coates; Laceby Acres and parts of Scartho. This is a new approach for VANEL as so many of our neighbourhood programmes have previously focused on urban areas. We’re working with rural areas afresh.
There’s some great groups and venues across our rural areas. VANEL would love to see them grow and develop even more. In East Riding there are 100+ village halls who all connect through their own “Village Halls Network”. We only have perhaps 15 key village venues across North East Lincolnshire but we’re working to connect them and support them more too. We’re also connected to HWRA too to help provide useful support.
Keep an eye on the Venues space on our website – that’s where we’ll be sharing news from this village halls week.
Contact Karl or Liz at VANEL to talk about Neighbourhood Networking further or register on our NeighboursTogether website and start joining in the conversation.
