Within the centuries old University of Wolverhampton, The Halls boasts large, versatile and modern meeting spaces that can crush conferences and deliver delightful dinners! We took a trip to this great venue recently and checked out all it had to offer.
The Halls is fresh off the back of a huge £63 million pound renovation which has completely transformed this incredible grade II listed building. The Halls at Wolverhampton was closed for a period until its reopening in 2023. Since then, the venue has revitalized the area, with the historic civic halls providing a focal point for events in the heart of Wolves. The Halls also have been nominated in the Constructing Excellence West Midlands Awards last year - incase you needed any more evidence as to just how impressive this venue has become.
The venue boasts eight fantastic meeting spaces, with the centrepiece being the impressive Civic Hall. There’s a real versatility in the meeting spaces on offer at The Halls though, with gorgeous second floor, medium sized meeting suites like the Circle Suite and the VIP Suites contrasting the main hall.
With plenty of nearby parking, train station minutes away and hotels galore nearby, this venue has all the connections you need to form the bedrock of a fantastic event.
We’ve frequently been impressed by the accessibility of Wolverhampton’s city centre on our grand tour of the city. Every venue seems to be so well connected to the city’s fab infrastructure - and The Halls is no exception. The train station is so easy to get to, we’re talking minutes walk away. The venue is also serviced by one of England's major international airports, Birmingham, with runways only being a breezy 40 minute drive from the Halls’ front door! We loved this, as it meant that this becomes a really easy to access venue for clients from all over the world - international delegates can get to this great space from the airport quicker than the trip from Heathrow to central London!
Surrounding the Halls are some really beautiful buildings, some belonging to the university of Wolverhampton, imbued with a modern freshness that is present in all the venues live events, and other more historic buildings that hark back to this city's roots. It’s a really clean, welcoming area for your event, and we found it particularly easy to find the front entrance.
But before we dive into the exciting facilities inside, the Halls isn’t short of supply when it comes to pragmatic options for parking and places to kip for your delegates after your event. The Civic Centre car park directly services the venue with hundreds of spaces available. Furthermore, there’s the Wulfrun NCP which is even larger and is the perfect place to point guests for overflow parking. In terms of hotels, There’s a Novotel, Best Western and Premier Inn all within minutes walk of this venue, so quite simply take your pick!
Address: University of Wolverhampton, The Halls, North Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1RD
Venue Website: https://www.thehallswolverhampton.co.uk/
Sales Contact Name & position: Amber Faux - Hospitality Sales Executive
Sales Contact Phone Number: 07877767988
Venue Email Address: boxoffice@thehallswolverhampton.co.uk
There’s two main halls at this venue, The Civic Hall and The Wulfrun Hall. There’s over 1000sqM of space here to be used whichever way you can dream it. The Civic Hall is the Halls’ main meeting space, and it’s huge - you can find more details in the Meeting Space Highlights - but what we can tell you is that this is a magnificent, impressive, and astoundingly well kitted-out space. The Wulfrun Hall is a smaller space, no less impressive at that, that’s perfect for medium sized dinner events. Both of the two main halls have fantastic stages set up with in-house PA systems, and dedicated teams of amazing AV professionals who were extremely accommodating for all sorts of eventing needs.
Across the whole venue there’s 11 bar/lounge areas, nine of which can be hired for your event. There’s also 13 dressing rooms which we thought was a really smart addition - we’ve had far too many busy days event-organising, in which a pre-event/talk/meeting shower would’ve been a dream - with these on site. That dream (although quite a practical one) becomes a reality. We couldn’t help but feel like this venue had been redesigned during the renovations, with total effectiveness in mind. Everything in all of the key meeting spaces, all of the reception areas - all the way down to the entrance and loading doorways felt so functional. This place has been designed by a team that actually knows what putting on a great event requires, it’s all substance, with style to boot.
The reason of course this venue needs the aforementioned dressing rooms, is the frequency of which they have world class acts and stars performing or hosting - mainly within the civic hall. The next few months will see the Halls host Will Smith, Jimmy Carr, Sparks and Jorja Smith, just to name a few! The caliber of people booking this space tells you the high regard we feel it deserves to be held in.
This venue is just so flexible and versatile. The spaces on offer here are suitable for so many kinds of events - from dance competitions to corporate conferences and everything in-between. You name it, the Halls have probably already hosted it.
All of the catering is done on site at this Wolverhampton venue, and it’s smashing. The on site team are hard-working and skilled - so that makes feeding hungry delegates very convenient! We chatted with the team who spoke to us about how happy they were to create exciting and bespoke experiences to match your event requirements - whether that’s on the dinner table, or in the meeting room!
As you might have guessed, the meeting spaces at The Halls are what really bring this venue to the fore of modern day conferencing facilities. In these spaces, you can see the no expense spared attitude of renovators, who’ve delivered a spectacular option for large and small scale events alike.
The renovation project is no more apparent than in the two stellar new suites that provide really excellent meeting spaces for your next event. The Portico suite is one of these spaces, seating 30 in theatre, and 18 in a boardroom layout; it's a smaller space that skips no steps. There’s a gorgeous breakout bar area, and really nice modern furnishings such as some exposed brick and mirrored walls. This is your perfect small networking space, or VIP drinks room!
The Portico isn’t the only new space, The VIP Suite is also completely new for the venue and absolutely does its namesake justice. Sleek furnishings and easily flexible seating make this top floor, medium sized space (70 theatre) a dream - offering sweet views over Wolverhampton while you’re at it!
It goes without saying that AV is this venue’s specialty and they seemed to have the latest and greatest tech to pull off any feat of production. We can’t tell you that we knew what any of the buttons on the live mixing desk did, but we can say that it looked very technical - and very new!
The Civic Hall
The Civic Hall is a stunning space. It’s got a gigantic stage perfect for large scale launches, or huge shows. However, the room proves its versatility with its ability to also function as a fantastic expo-space that can be used in combination with The Wulfrun Hall to have two large rooms for your exhibition! There’s 690 sqM of floor space here, so we’d challenge you to run out! With the brilliant AV and lighting rigs built into this space, this is a high tech, high level event area that we were hugely impressed by!
The Wulfrun Hall
The Wulfrun Hall calls back to the amazing history of this venue with huge, impressive murals covering the walls by the large 7.9 x 6.3m stage. The high ceilings in this room again give the impression of infinite space with room for 800 delegates theatre style.
The Lantern Suite
Last but absolutely not least, The Lantern Suite provides a totally different kind of experience for you. This room is a more intimate, relaxed space with high seating and a large bar. We envisioned this as the perfect breakout space for large scale events taking place in the civic Hall, allowing guests to wind down in this really cool room. This also has lots of potential for a great networking space, loads of room, plenty of drinks and a great atmosphere to boot.
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Summary
Ultimately, what makes the Halls stand out is the synthesis of old and new to create a really fantastic venue. The historic halls and campus combine with brand new, top of the range, technical interiors to provide an event solution that really surprised us with its quality. This is yet another gem in the amazing set of offerings in Wolverhampton!