Johnny Thomson  0:01
Hello and welcome to The Village Halls Podcast, kindly sponsored by Allied Westminster, the UK’s largest specialist provider of village hall insurance and the home of VillageGuard.

This is Episode Zero, where I’ll briefly introduce what the Village Halls Podcast is about, who it’s for and what (hopefully) it will go on to achieve. My name is Johnny Thomson and I’m your podcast host.

In the UK, there are more than 10,000 village, church and community halls or centres, each run and supported by incredible groups of volunteers. Village Halls are not simply places for social and physical activities, often they are the lifeblood of local communities and a real lifeline for people of all ages, offering essential services and at times emergency facilities. As such they’re a critical part of the national infrastructure. Yet strangely, and despite the growing popularity of podcasts in the UK, there is currently nothing on offer to those who run, provide support or are involved closely with village halls. That is until now!

The idea behind The Village Halls Podcast is to develop a listening community for Britain’s village, church and community halls and anyone interested in the vital community services they provide. At least twice a month there’ll be a new episode on offer, featuring different guests, each with useful information to share and hopefully some entertaining stories as well.

Episode 1 for example, which is coming soon, will delve into the history of village halls over the last 100 years and take a look at what the future might hold. And later, we’ll also be exploring ways in which some halls have been able to breath new life into their activities, as well as some of the challenges halls face right now and some of the ways these challenges can be overcome.

So please, keep listening. There’s all kinds of ways of listening and receiving updates. You can subscribe through your favourite podcast service, such as Apple, Spotify, Google or Amazon, simply search for The Village Halls Podcast and subscribe. Or you can visit our website at www.thevillagehallspodcast.com and sign up for updates. If you’re not all that familiar with podcasting, there’s even a short guide on our website to introduce you to some of the basics.

And finally, please remember this podcast is not just for you, it’s about you. The people behind Britain’s fabulous network of Village Halls and so I’d really love to hear from you. Please get in touch by emailing johnny@thevillagehallspodcast.com or through our facebook or twitter pages and tell me your stories. Feed in your ideas for future episodes, what YOU want to hear about. I want to hear what you’re up to, what kind of successes and challenges you’re facing and then why not come on the show, be a guest and share what you know.

Keep listening, join in the discussion on our social media pages and let’s see where The Village Halls Podcast takes us. Until the next time, goodbye for now.