00:00It was about 15 years after the miners' strike, so the area was quite run down, a lot of unemployment,
00:09a lot of disillusion, a lot of services were kind of being withdrawn from the area.
00:14And we felt that if we were to be able to build a wind farm, then we could sell the
00:21energy and put all the profits back into the community.
00:23The wind farm puts electricity into the grid. We get a payment for that. With the first payment, we bought
00:31this building. It was the old school and it closed down in 2015.
00:36It was so well loved. My own children came to this school, which was really lovely. So it was really
00:42important to make sure that people were involved in what this future was going to be, because it is still
00:46a community space, it is still their space.
00:48So we wanted to make sure it was going to be used by them.
00:51So Hilbert Gorse is a low-carbon community hub, and the idea of it is to create a space which
00:59enables people and supports people to live a kind of low-carbon lifestyle.
01:05But also, it's all about community resilience as well. You know, we have mental health projects, we have community arts
01:11projects, we have our energy advice team are here.
01:16It was really, really special to actually be able to open the doors and get people in.
01:20There's real pinch-me moments when we've actually got kids coming in, and kids running up and down the corridors
01:25again.
01:26They're like, they're really, really special. And yeah, just to see people in the building again.
01:34You know, it's good for the community, it's good for the environment. This is a win-win situation. We've kind
01:40of compared it to Tower Colliery, where, you know, the miners bought the mine.
01:44And it's like, it makes so much sense. Keep the money in the community, keep the resources in the community.
01:51It's our wind. Let's use it.
01:53You got it.
01:54You got it.
01:54You got it.
01:55You
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