This year’s Village Hall’s week is focused on celebrating all of the Village Hall’s amazing volunteers.

There was a good turn-out at The Stewart Hall,  Brightwell Cum Sotwell, on 18^th March for a Village Halls Week event.

A presentation was made on the major refurbishment project at Stewart Hall by Annette Kilworth (Chairperson of the Hall Committee ), followed by a presentation made by Tessa Hall, Community First Oxfordshire, focused on ‘How to recruit and retain volunteers’. Some very useful discussions were held during and after each presentation.

‘Very many thanks for organising this afternoon’s event, it was both useful and informative and I know from conversations held after the formal presentations, so did others’.

Neil Sutherland, OBE DL. Deputy Lieutenant of Oxfordshire.

Call for Evidence! Rural Inequalities in Oxfordshire – Marmot Place Project. 

The goals of the Marmot Place Project are to better understand the nature of rural inequalities, which areas in the county are affected, what characterises them, and how they manifest, so that they can collectively take steps to address them. To achieve this, they would like to ask you to share your insights and perspectives on the topic of rural inequality based on your experience of engaging in this space in Oxfordshire. Please share any information to [email protected]

More specifically, they would be keen to hear from you regarding any data or information (lived experience or resident stories) that you wish to share that helps to build a picture of the inequalities that may be experienced, such as access to healthcare, social or other services, housing, employment, infrastructure, and challenges to health and wellbeing in rural areas. They would welcome any reports or examples of previous work you have done to help map existing activity on this topic. All the information shared will be collated by the Oxfordshire Marmot working group on rural inequalities and shared with relevant partners. Please do not share any personal or identifiable data.

They are also planning to run a workshop to take forward these discussions and capture wider views, so please let them know if you would like to join this ([email protected]).

Please let them know if you would like more information about this call for evidence or if you would like to arrange a meeting to discuss how you can get involved – [email protected] .

The Marmot Place Project – for more information about the programme, please visit Marmot Places – IHE or watch this short video of the Oxfordshire launch event https://vimeo.com/1039952135/71b108d305?share=copy