Built by the community - at the opening of Cullingworth's new village hall

Yesterday I made my final appearance on a pubic platform (which I quite literally managed to fall off - but that's a different story). It was the opening party for the brand new Cullingworth Village Hall. Here are my words...

"Who’d have thought that, when Bryan Hobson said we needed £500,000 to build a new hall, that nearly six years – and best part of a million pounds – later we’d be standing in a place this magnificent.

And the best thing about this brilliant new hall is written on the artwork you all saw as you walked in…

BUILT BY THE COMMUNITY

It wasn’t built by the council, by some agency of government or some benevolent billionaire – it was built by you. And it will stand as a reminder that, if you set out to do something as a community, you can succeed.

Standing here talking to you today is, pretty much, the last thing I’ll do as your local councillor. And it is great, for me if not for you, that my last speech is in the village where I live congratulating the people of that place – my neighbours – on what they’ve achieved.

There is a huge long list of thank yous – many captured on the artwork in what will be the café area – and I’m not going to attempt that list. Instead I want to single out 4 women without whom this hall wouldn’t have happened: Jill Logan, Kathryn Toledano, Jill Smith and Janet Toner. I’ve seen how many hundreds of hours have been put into raising the funds, getting planning permission, negotiating with the council and getting the hall actually built. I’ve witnessed the highs and lows, the tearing of hair and the jumping with joy. I know many others played a part but without those four women, we wouldn’t have got to where we are today.

I’ve often said that, if we want a better world, we need to start by making our little world better. With the things we can see from our doorstep. It’s easy to point at distant governments, at local councils, at us politicians – ‘they can do it, it’s their job’ – but isn’t it our village, our community, our place, shouldn’t we start with asking what we can do not wait for someone else far away to maybe notice us?

I hope this new hall allows for a host of new projects, new ideas – anything from a bunch of people learning Spanish – the new hall's first paying customers - to events and support for old and young.

I promised to be brief and so will stop at this point. I’ll leave you – before handing over to Jill Logan who’ll talk a little more about how we got here – with a thought:

A village is about the people who live there. What makes such a place work is that these people care – about each other, about the village itself and about making it a better place. We don’t always agree about what’s important but, saying that, we all have what Gandhi called an ‘imagined village’ in our heads. And, you know, most of our imagined villages look pretty much the same.

So well done. Give yourselves a round of applause. Shake your neighbour’s hand. Give them a hug.

And enjoy your hall."

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