Comedy Village’s charity auction

At the recent Comedy Village, the regular comedy event that takes place at the village hall in Baslow, organiser Rob Rouse held a charity auction to raise much-needed funds for Baslow Village Hall, which was affected by the recent storm.

Alison Haynes, secretary at the village hall, issued the following statement:

It was a great night and nearly £500 was raised! What an incredible amount raised in just a few hours and it was all accompanied with lots of laughter!

Thank you very much to everyone who donated prizes for the auction and to everyone who came along on the night to bid and take part in such a unique event. And thank you especially to Rob for having such a great idea and carrying it all off with aplomb!

£500 is a great start but we still need to raise another £1500 to cover our known costs from the flooding. And this amount could go up if further damage emerges and we find that we need to claim on our insurance policy. (We have a very high excess as we are in a high flood risk area and we are hoping that we will not need to make a claim).

As most of you know, we were already struggling financially due to our very high energy bills (and loss of income during Covid). Although we are a charity, we are charged at a small business rate for our energy. Our bills more than trebled last winter meaning that we were operating at a substantial loss.

We could not pass such an increase onto our users, especially at a time when everyone was struggling with the cost of living crisis. Our energy prices have come down a bit now but we are still spending much more than we used to and we really do need to hold some more fundraising events and increase our bookings to try to break even.

We have a few ideas for fundraising which we are already pursuing. If you have any ideas we would love to hear them. Another great way to help is to simply book the village hall. All sorts of events can be held there. We have a very comfortable office space which can be used for small meetings as well as the lovely big hall for larger gatherings. Please spread the word!

Thank you for your support.

For more information about Baslow Village Hall visit their website

For more information about The Comedy Village visit their website