Welcome again everyone!

Just 12 months ago we hosted our first national conference at the historic Mildmay Club in London.

Back then, 21st Century Social Clubs was still, in many ways, just a very good idea.

We’d started making the argument: social clubs had been overlooked for too long, that their decline was not inevitable; and that actually there was cause for optimism for some of the most important community institutions this country has ever produced.

Though there’s still work to do, and we talk about it as a generational initiative, a year on, things feel rather different.

And what a great place we are in today to mark that progress: Redhills, in the heart of the Great Northern Coalfield.

Look around, and you can see what can happen when people come together around institutions that they have built themselves – places for people to organise, to debate, to educate themselves, and ultimately to exercise power.

Over the last couple of years, the team and coalition around 21st century social clubs has pushed this onto the agenda.

We’ve begun to build a national picture of the challenges facing social clubs through research, surveys, and roundtables.

We’ve brought club leaders into conversations with ministers and through visits to No.10.

Our unofficial minister for social clubs, Kirsty McNeill, MP for Midlothian, who has been with us from the start and is here again this year. Together we’ve pushed for badly needed policy change - and already we’ve secured millions of pounds in funding and better support for the nation’s clubs.

But it’s not just about support from a distance. We’ve taken national funders and policy makers on study visits and to events where they get the opportunity to see what it's really like inside a club.

It makes a real difference when people see them up close - getting past preconceived ideas of what social clubs are and could be, and seeing the real power and difference they make, by meeting the people whose lives they make so much better every single day.

This is just a start, but it points the way forward: creating a new image of club life that can pull in the wider public.

Achieving this will need the whole coalition represented here today, and more.

That means working closely with those of you in the room who have been in clubs your whole lives.

But it will also need those who had never stepped foot in a club before, but could become powerful advocates.

It's going to need councils, trade unions, national funders, cultural performers, national federations and, of course, an ever greater number of social clubs who are doing amazing work to be more reflective of their local communities.

We’ve had some great help already from partners in the media - working with Radio 4, ITV news, Daily Mirror and the Guardian.

I have to give a special shout-out to Ros and Claire who have been publishing about us in their Real Britain column in the Daily Mirror - I'm really looking forward to the quiz at Liverpool's Casa Club during the Labour conference later this month!

So the opportunity for reviving social clubs is bigger than ever before, but we know there’s lots of work to do.

This afternoon we are officially launching our new five-year programme – supported by £2.7m from the National Lottery’s Solidarity Fund.

We’ve had 100 expressions of interest from clubs already, and we’re now moving to the full application stage. By the end of next month, we'll be announcing our first group of clubs joining the programme, who will benefit from a range of specialist advice, and funding to support community organising. More on this later!

Alongside this, we're working with councils like Rotherham to provide grants and business support to social clubs.

The council leader is drafting a letter to the new Prime Minister to suggest this should be resourced across the whole country.

It's obvious that local authorities have a major role to play in the fate and future of clubs in their regions.

We’re also starting to explore the role of social clubs in climate resilience.

We’re planning to work with social clubs across the country to explore the potential of increasing renewables on club buildings, to make them more economically resilient in an era where the energy crisis looks like it will only get worse.

This will save them money and generate income – but it will mean social clubs can provide warm spaces where needed, as well, as we’ve seen this summer, cool spaces during major heat events.

Despite it being a major export, our grassroots music industry is in crisis, too.

So in November we will be at Metro Sports and Social Club in Manchester, for an event that presents social clubs as part of the answer to the decline of grassroots music venues.

Alongside this decline in accessible spaces, we’ll be also tackling how entrenched class barriers continue to prevent artists from developing and pursuing careers.

And finally, we're promoting social clubs within the government’s ten-year Pride in Place programme.

£5.8bn has been put forward to fund local regeneration and stronger communities in 100s of places across the UK. While social clubs were directly recognised in the published strategy last year, we know there's a lot of work to support them to be part of the conversation, influence local boards, and secure actual funding.

Tomorrow, I run a workshop on the value of community assets for Pride in Place chairs in London. We know that the ownership of buildings is a major factor in community economic development and that there’s a clear opportunity here to invest in existing infrastructure – like our social clubs.

So, where next?

Well that's up to all of us.

• Can we create more partnerships and support programmes with local councils?

• Can we unlock millions of pounds from Pride in Place so it benefits and future proofs social clubs?

• Can we create partnerships with creative and arts organisations to activate these spaces for grassroots culture again?

• And can we work with organisations building belonging to make social clubs a vital tool in social cohesion?

To do all of this, and the many other ideas you will have today, we will need a strong coalition.

Together, we have to make social clubs matter to more people, and make investing in them a national priority.

But we have to be realistic. We can't stop every social club from closing its doors.

There’s no doubt that many clubs' very existence remains under threat.

The cost of living, a potential recession, and the changing climate are pushing more and more into financial difficulties.

That’s another reason why we have to move quickly to get the right support to clubs that have the ambition to be 21st century social clubs.

So there's a challenge here for all of us: what can you do in your organisation or community to unlock more support for clubs now and over the next year?

I hope that we – as a room of people who are already committed to backing social clubs – can arrive at more answers to this question and persuade more people to support it.

Now, it's my honour again, to introduce Kirsty McNeill MP for today’s keynote!