The Village Halls Podcast · Inspiration Awards
What started as a handful of shout-outs has grown into one of the highlights of our year — real halls, real ideas, and £5,000 in prize money up for grabs. Here’s how to enter, and the winners who’ve come before you.
The awards started life in March 2022 as the Wonderful Villages Awards — five categories, five prizes of £1,000, launched in one episode and revealed in another later that year. Since then they’ve grown into the Village Halls Inspiration Awards: a proper podcast series each year, with a full round-up episode plus an individual deep-dive conversation for every hall that places.
It’s become one of the parts of this podcast I look forward to most — hearing what committees up and down the country have actually managed to pull off, usually on a shoestring and entirely by volunteers. It felt like time the awards had a permanent home of their own, so here it is — how to enter, and every winner so far.
Open to any village, community or memorial hall serving a rural UK community — one entry per hall, with your committee’s backing. Tell us in 600–800 words about the impact you’ve made, what you’ve tried, the challenges you’ve overcome, and where you’re headed next. £5,000 in prize money is up for grabs across three places (£2,500 / £1,500 / £1,000), sponsored by Allied Westminster.
Conversations with all three winning halls — online booking and digital accessibility, dementia-friendly venue design, the community-led revival of a wartime building, and food provision that goes as far as meal delivery with welfare checks built in.
Have a listen back through the archive — proof that a good idea and a determined committee can go a long way.
The reveal: three halls sharing £5,000 in prize money — North Moreton Village Hall (1st, £2,500), Ellingham Village Hall (2nd, £1,500) and Great Whittington Village Hall (3rd, £1,000). The full deep-dive conversation with each is below.
A 70-response resident survey, targeted (not generic) volunteer recruitment, and a multi-phase fundraising push that raised around £57,000 from reserves, grants and grassroots events — book sales, barn dances and quiz nights included.
A complete rebuild for a 120-year-old hall serving around 300 residents — 88% community backing, costs that climbed from £300,000 to £462,000, and a phased build that let them prove success before chasing the next round of funding.
From cold, damp former school building to a hall running on solar panels, a heat pump and battery storage — funded through roughly £74,000 raised across the National Lottery, community foundations and local charities. Usage went from eight bookings a winter to thirty-five.
The launch episode — the very start of it all. Five categories, five prizes of £1,000 each: Unsung Hero, Innovation, Young Person’s Award, Project of the Year, and Inspirational Story. This is where the awards began, back when they were still just an idea and an invitation to enter.
Before they became the Inspiration Awards, this was five categories and five winners sharing £1,000 each: Joan Maxfield (Unsung Hero, English Bicknor), Hannah Blisset (Young Person’s Award, Grindon), Shustoke Village Hall (Innovation Award, for an automated heating system), Centre of Pendeen (Project of the Year, for sustainability) and Tarbock Jubilee Village Hall (Inspirational Story).