Action In Rural Sussex

Heart Of The Village Campaign

Village Heart Campaign Logo

In order to recognise and highlight the importance of community buildings in rural areas of Sussex, Action in rural Sussex is launching a 'Heart of the Village' campaign. This campaign will run until the end of 2010, it has two primary objectives:

Objective 1

To celebrate the investment from the enormous number of people within rural communities across Sussex who provide local buildings and facilities.

Objective 2

To call for action from key decision-makers and funders to help ensure that this work continues into the future.

Click here to download a copy of the AirS Newsletter April 2009 - Special Edition - Heart of the Village Campaign.

How you can get involved:

There are a number of actions that you can do to get involved with the AirS Heart of the Village Campaign:

Sign our petition:

Sign our Number 10 petition, to persuade the Government to provide a dedicated fund from Big Lottery Funding for capital build projects that improve and develop community building facilities in rural areas. PLEASE NOTE: During the official campaign period for the General Election this e-Petitions system will be closed to new submissions and signatures. The Government will also not issue responses to petitions during this period. A further update will be posted on this website after the General Election.

Donate to our campaign:

Donate to the campaign so that we can develop our ideas further and provide practical help to community buildings to get involved;

Get involved in your local community:

If you are not involved with your community building take the trouble to find out more and see if you can assist, contact your local parish clerk to find out more.

Tell us what you think:

Send us your stories and case studies, good and bad, about the issues faced by your community in developing and maintaining locally owned community facilities. We want to know what you think, how the campaign could be improved and what you feel are the most important aspects - villageheart@ruralsussex.org.uk;
Register your email address with us so that you can receive email alerts when something new is posted on the website;
Bookmark us and visit www.ruralsussex.org.uk regularly to find out more details of the Heart of the Village Campaign. There will be regular updates on issues and campaign activities that you can get involved with;

Participate in AirS events:

Put the date of our Annual Conference in your diary - 6th November - and come along to amplify the messages to decision makers and to develop the campaign further;
AirS wants to establish a Village Halls Open Day as a Sussex event in summer 2010. Register with us to receive more information on this event by emailing Villageheart@ruralsussex.org.uk
Look out for training and workshop events that will be developed to encourage more volunteers to come forward to help run community buildings by providing them with appropriate skills and knowledge.

Campaign Overview

Action in rural Sussex is seeking to highlight the role of the wide-array of community buildings that provide a central focus and hub for rural communities. This includes: village halls, church halls, sports pavilions, community shops and memorial halls and any other facilities or buildings which provide a central focus for community activities and interaction.

Rural Community Buildings come in all shapes, ages and sizes. However one thing is common to them all – they are essential for the vitality and vibrancy of community life. Whilst community buildings have always performed a key role in rural communities, they have never been more important in ensuring their sustainability.

The task of operating and maintaining community buildings is becoming increasingly complicated, time-consuming and expensive. Support and guidance is needed at both central and local levels to ensure that communities in the rural areas of Sussex are assisted in managing an essential resource.

A downloadable overview of the Campaign taken from the April 2009 version of our Action newsletter may be obtained here.

Key Campaign Messages

In order to support the Heart of the Village objectives, a set of campaign messages which highlight and explain the role of community buildings have been developed:

1. A meeting place at the heart of the community is essential to maintain the vitality and vibrancy of rural communities.

2. The people running community buildings are the heart of the community.

3. Action in rural Sussex runs a Community Building Support Service. For more information on this service, please click here.

4. Rural community buildings will not survive without a dedicated national funding programme.

5. Parish or Town Councils should raise funds through the precept to fully support the building and the work of the community building committees.