A covid proof hall for Meare & Westhay

Aim

To design and build a village hall which will be safe to use in a Covid type emergency. The design of the hall will be freely shared.

We have a 110 year old village hall that is cold,damp and in the wrong place. Our village has a population of nearly 1500 but our only place to meet has a capacity of  65, which cannot be expanded. Over the last 25 years we saved up and bought a 4.5 acre field, accessed from a short lane in the middle if the village. Since we bought it we have laid a good road, created a car park and built a children's play area. All this we did with our own money, raised at Gala days ( see the photo) and money raised in the parish precept. To build the hall we are taking out a public works loan of £200k to get iour project started and prove our commitment but we need your help to get it finished and to make the plans available to other communities up and down the UK.  We believe in giving back and paying forward; by helping us get our hall built you will be helping build and adapt 100's of halls making them Covid safe and usable all year.

What's special about our new hall is that we have designed it using the views of 400 of our parishioners, so it's a hall fit for what they want to do. We do have a large room where badminton, short mat bowls, table tennis and more can be played but we also have a curvy central spine running through the hall with two large planters holding shrubs,  around which are seats where we can meet and chat. Off to one side there is a lounge opening out onto a veranda  and there is also a Bar to serve drinks and snacks. A meeting room, kitchen, changing rooms and toilets, one of which is in the lobby and available all day long when the  hall being is open.  Many villages, including ours, have been lacking a public toilet and we felt that this essential facility should be freely available.

 Our contribution to other parishes is to make our Covid proof ventilation and heating system design available to them. The air in our hall will change up to ten times per hour making it as safe to be inside as outside. This will mean our hall will stay open and we will be able to continue with all of our social activities even if more Covid waves break over the UK. If we win the funding we need to achieve this then every new  hall and many older halls will be able to use and adapt our design so that they too can remain open

This project closed unsuccessfully on 21st September 2021