Johnny Thomson 00:01
So, entries have now closed for our Wonderful Villages Awards. So what happens next, you may be wondering? Well, keep listening and we’ll explain everything. Hello everyone, I’m Johnny Thomson and welcome to The Village Halls Podcast sponsored by Allied Westminster, the UK’s largest specialist provider of village hall insurance and the home of VillageGuard. Now, if you’ve been following our podcasts regularly you’ll already know that we’ve been running something called the Wonderful Villages Awards in 2022 and that entries to the awards closed a few weeks ago on the 31st October. I’m also sure that there are now many village halls up and down the country who are quite eager to find out whether or not they are one of five winners of £1,000 each. To quickly explain what’s happening next, I’m delighted to see I’ve been joined once again by Gavin Mitchell from our podcast and Wonderful Villages Award sponsors Allied Westminster. Hi, Gavin…

Gavin Mitchell 01:05
Hello Johnny, good to speak to you again…

Johnny Thomson 01:08
Great to have you back again. How’s things with you?

Gavin Mitchell 01:11
Yeah great Johnny, yes absolutely fantastic. Just back from a couple of weeks on holiday, but yeah it’s good to have my feet back under the desk and working away and fully refreshed and ready to go.

Johnny Thomson 01:21
Adventuring in Iceland I understand, a little bit tells me yeah?

Gavin Mitchell 01:26
Yeah indeed Johnny, for fear of coming across as an ambassador for the Icelandic Tourist Board, what can I say, amazing, awe inspiring, addictive. I’ve been there a number of times, but to be fair it’s eye wateringly expensive, but wow what a country. Teally welcoming people and just a great place, great place.

Johnny Thomson 01:45
Don’t worry, I won’t grill you on it. I know we’re not here to present a travel show, but to talk about the Wonderful Villages Awards…

Gavin Mitchell 01:55
…in the UK.

Johnny Thomson 01:58
And most importantly, how soon the winners, and all of our listeners out there, will find out who the winners actually are. But before we do that, let’s just talk about well, the hundreds of entries we’ve received Gavin from across the UK. Quite amazing, aren’t they?

Gavin Mitchell 02:15
Yeah, incredible examples. I mean, very diverse. All sorts of things from COVID comebacks to environmental improvements, food banks, festivals and events. Fantastic, you know, fantastic stuff going on, support groups. And I think, I mean, you probably feel the same way, Johnny, but you know, from all corners of the nations of the UK, you know, from the Highlands of Scotland, Lowlands of Scotland, all over the UK it’s a fantastic array of entries and great geographical diversity. It’s fantastic.

Johnny Thomson 02:47
Exactly. Scotland, Wales, pretty much every county of England in there, and just so many amazing people…

Gavin Mitchell 02:54
Yeah very much so…

Johnny Thomson 02:55
And who you know, quite clearly work nonstop, to help others. And, of course, we’ve already spoken to a few of those who’ve entered as well for some of our recent episodes, such as Nick Cole from Shustoke, who talked to us about their innovative use of technology to make the village hall run more energy efficiently. It was a really, really interesting insight there.

Gavin Mitchell 03:18
Yeah, I think inspirational from any village halls. If anyone hasn’t listened to it, they should tune in and have a listen to it. Very, very informative.

Johnny Thomson 03:27
Yeah, yeah and Richard Coates as well, of course, and their incredible fundraising event that the village of Croft in North Yorkshire participated in to remember their friend Jonny Preston, who sadly passed away for too young.

Gavin Mitchell 03:40
Yeah, indeed, indeed.

Johnny Thomson 03:42
And of course those are just a couple of the many, many entries we’ve received. And it’s really quite heartwarming isn’t it Gavin to have had the privilege of finding out…

Gavin Mitchell 03:53
Well indeed and Johnny, if I can, sorry to interrupt Johnny, I was gonna say right from the off I mean, I’d like to offer a huge thank you for everyone who was entered, because I think I mean, like you Johnny, I’ve just been blown away by the sheer range and quality of the entries we’ve received. And yeah, it’s heartwarming, some of the stuff that we’ve we’ve read, and we’ve seen, it’s terrific. It’s very good stuff. So a huge thank you, I think to everyone that’s submitted.

Johnny Thomson 04:21
Yes, so many, so many heroes out there. And so many communities and all with incredible stories to tell as well, it’s, it’s been fantastic. So anyway, what will be happening next? Well, we need to pick a winner. For each of the five categories of the awards. We’ve got the Unsung Hero or Heroes Award, the Innovation Award, Young Persons Award, Project of the Year and finally the Inspirational Story Award. And what we’re going to do is, we’re going to appoint one lead judge for each category. One of them will be me, and another will be Gavin, plus a few others who are properly qualified for the task shall we say. And together all of us will come up with the winners with the lead judge for each category having the final say. It’s one of the things we’ve learned havn’t we Gavin from doing this in the past, you’ve always got to leave someone with the final decision otherwise, we never get to a decision. Now this process will still take a few weeks, so please bear with us. And what I can say is it will hopefully have chosen our winners by the end of this month in November. Is that the dog Gavin?

Gavin Mitchell 05:42
Actually, I’m sorry about that, as you know Johnny, we’ve been here before.

Johnny Thomson 05:47
We talked about we talked about this the last time you were on.

Gavin Mitchell 05:50
He’s the mascot, he’s the mascot now. Now when I put him outside the house, you know we’ve had this conversation, he’s got the knack of tapping the window to let me know he’s outside. And when he’s inside he very rudely interrupts by shaking himself or making some sort of noise. So apologies for that. It’s the dog, not me.

Johnny Thomson 06:09
He’s a border collie yeah?

Gavin Mitchell 06:11
He is a border collie, he’s a great, great boy. Very good boy and yes, a border collie.

Johnny Thomson 06:15
What’s he called?

Gavin Mitchell 06:16
Finn.

Johnny Thomson 06:18
Finn, fantastic. Brilliant.

Gavin Mitchell 06:21
It’s like an episode of Blue Peter isn’t it Johnny?

Johnny Thomson 06:23
Exactly, yeah. ‘Get down Finn!’

Gavin Mitchell 06:26
Indeed!

Johnny Thomson 06:29
Well, Finn is welcome anytime, as you are of course Gavin. So yes, we’ll… Basically, I think I was saying, hopefully we’ll have chosen the winners by the end of this month, November. We’ll then be writing to each and every one who has entered, to let you know if you’ve been successful or not. So expect to hear from us, probably somewhere in early December. When it comes to announcing the winners, we’ll be doing that on this show itself, with separate podcast episodes for each winner. So that’ll be one at a time. And I’ll be joined by the lead judge for each category of award and someone from the winning hall, of course. And these podcast episodes will inevitably run into the new year and I’m sure you’ll be interested to know who the winners are and why we chose them. So all I can say is just keep listening. How does all of that sound, Gavin?

Gavin Mitchell 07:27
Perfect. That’s absolutely perfect. So that’s certainly that we’ve got the message out now and, you know, again, big thank you. It’s going to take a while to go through everything in detail, because the content was amazing that we received so yeah, thank you Johnny.

Johnny Thomson 07:41
Yeah, no and I couldn’t agree more Gavin. You know, thank you to everyone, as you’ve said, for entering and good luck. We’ll be getting back to you, as I said, in the coming weeks. And Gavin thank you again for coming on and for sponsoring the show and The Wonderful Villages Awards. I know you’re really hugely passionate about this network of village halls across the country, they do a tremendous job don’t they.

Gavin Mitchell 08:09
Thank you. Yes, indeed Johnny, yes very much so. And I think it’s especially the Unsung Heroes, a lot of the entries are really patting the back of so many unsung heroes that would never run forward themselves. And the whole network of village halls is full of people like that. And I think it’s great that, it’s great that we’re doing these awards. I’m very proud of it. And thank you Johnny for helping with this.

Johnny Thomson 08:33
Yeah, yeah, and that Unsung Heroes I think is going to be very, very difficult to judge. I’ll try and probably avoid that category, because we’ve had quite a few in there. And…

Gavin Mitchell 08:44
Johnny there’s so many winners across the board, but we only you know, we have to choose who we choose Johnny and you know, do our best.

Johnny Thomson 08:52
Very, very difficult. So yeah, thanks, Gavin. And, you know, thanks as always to you and to Allied Westminster for your support, who you can find out more about a villageguard.com by the way. And I’d also like to thank online booking system provider Hallmaster, who also sponsor our podcast and can be found at hallmaster.co.uk. So, yeah, brilliant. Thanks Gavin, it’s been really good chatting again.

Gavin Mitchell 09:20
Thank you Johnny. Thank you.

Johnny Thomson 09:21
And you’ve been listening to The Village Halls Podcast, a unique listening community for Britain’s village, church and community halls, and anyone interested in the vital community services they provide. We’ll be back again soon with another episode. So if you haven’t already, please visit thevillagehallspodcast.com to subscribe, sign up for updates, link through to our social media pages, and to find out more. Until the next time, goodbye for now