Aghalee Village Hall

Aghalee Village Hall is the last remaining Carnegie Hall in Northern Ireland. It was built and paid for by far sighted citizens of the village in 1932 and after opening in 1933 it has remained a focus for all educational, social and community development activities since. Aghalee is a small rural village with no other neutral hall for the local community, who have a real say in what goes on by virtue of the AGM voting rules. We have great support from the local community and have a large volunteer base, both from formal committee members and from ‘friends of the hall’. We host a number of community events throughout the year, including an Art Exhibition, Solstice walk, Children's Summer Scheme, Rock n Pop night, Craft fair and Christmas lights switch on. We also host regular de-stash events where local crafters come and sell on their surplus equipment and supplies to to others. We have solar panels on the roof of our building along with battery storage for the electricity produced. We have reduced single item use as much as possible and encourage all our groups and hirers to do likewise. Among the activities we host regularly are: upholstery classes on 2 days, a repair café which runs every second month and needlecraft classes monthly, where we teach old and new needlework techniques. In our main programme running since reopening after Covid, we have held workshops and classes in the following – hand and machine sewing, knitting, crochet and repair and reuse clothing. We have also held car boot sales to encourage reuse of unwanted items and are very happy to look at other ways in which we can contribute to the repair, reuse and renew programme.