Small businesses like mine couldn’t survive without village halls
Kent Kids Parties owner James Hailes provides a guest blog for #VillageHallsWeek on the impact of Covid on his livelihood and the need to sustain a vibrant network of community buildings.
I’ve run an entertainment business called Kent Kids Parties for nearly 20 years and village halls have been a vital part of its continued success. Indeed, one of our most popular services is providing entertainment for children’s birthday parties. 86% of these are from parents who organise a party at a local village or community hall, so these venues really are valuable to the community, as well as small businesses.
Covid-19 was a nightmare for the entertainment industry as a whole and it hit us particularly hard bearing in mind our reliance on community halls. Hall committees are mostly run by volunteers and they were faced with a minefield of (forever changing) government regulations. However, ACRE has done an amazing job releasing guidance (written in plain English) to save committees having to wade through the reams of documents on the government website.
ACRE also provided a listening ear to me! Deborah Clarke, ACRE’s Village Halls Manager was often at the brunt of my frustrated phone calls or emails when I felt some halls (key to my livelihood) were slow to reopen. So, I’m sure I speak for hall committees and hall users alike, but ACRE has been a rock during these strange times.
In the absence of village halls, we tried everything to keep going – even offering party shows over Zoom from our office. Whilst the Zoom shows were a huge success, it wasn’t enough to keep us going and I reluctantly decided to mothball Kent Kids Parties. I took a job with Amazon in the meantime. The online retailer had just done a deal with Morrisons, making groceries available through the Amazon website and they were looking for delivery drivers.
Since the summer of 2021 things have started to get back to some kind of normality. The network of halls has re-opened and Kent Kids Parties is back once again, dispatching entertainers to village halls to help families celebrate their child’s birthday. It’s nice to be back and if anything good has come from the last few years it’s the reminder of just how valuable village halls are to the local community – not just for hall users but for businesses, like mine, who operate from them.
Onwards and upwards.
Kent Kids Parties is one of the busiest and best-loved children’s entertainer businesses in Kent with years of experience and 1,000s of children’s parties under our belts
