Re_ Club at The Floating Front Room + Retrofit House

Join us as we come together in a relaxed space to repair, reimagine, resist, rejoice and more at The Floating Front Room and Retrofit House.
About this Event

Re_ Club is a way to come together to repair, reuse, reimagine, resist, rejoice, restore and more in 2026 as we go into a new chapter for the design and construction of Neighbourhood Public Square and Retrofit House.

Re_ Club aims to brings together the best of shared practices around care, repair, creativity and connection in our homes, streets and neighbourhoods, and explore how they can unlock more possibility, more relationships, and more life for the land, materials and people that make up our places.
With welcoming shared spaces and hands-on workshops, Re_ Club aims to spark our imaginations while addressing everyday practical needs, making the most of the materials we have, the many languages and ways of knowing around us, as well as dreaming far beyond the here and now too; joining the dots—stitch by stitch, conversation by conversation, coffee by coffee—for how we might get there together.
Join us as we open up Re_ Club throughout the Summer across multiple sites, with activities taking place at both The Floating Front Room—a barge moored in South Loop Park alongside the Neighbourhood Public Square site—and nearby Retrofit House on Link Road this July and August, where we have making ourselves at home this year so far.
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What To Expect

• Head through South Loop Park to our meeting point over at The Floating Front Room—a green barge moored canalside—from 4pm onwards
• Here there will be a light meal from 4pm provided by Lola the Cafeboat, which will be vegetarian and nut free. Food will be served from their boat, which will be moored up alongside The Floating Front Room
• A short introduction will take place at The Floating Front Room at 4.45pm to welcome you to Re_ Club and share more about this evening's sessions
• Practical sessions will start from 5.15pm, taking place at both The Floating Front Room and throughout nearby Retrofit House on Link Road, across three storeys
• Members of the CIVIC SQUARE team will be your hosts for the evening, and are there to help you navigate, answer any questions and make connections, including supporting those walking to and from Retrofit House
• In these sessions, you will be learning with your neighbours, artists, local craftspeople and creative practitioners in hands on ways in small groups, such as mending clothes, caring for plants or mapping possibilities
• You can immerse yourself into one session, or explore any number of them during the evening, with the ability to drop in, test, and try different things
• Pong, one of our regular baristas will be joining us to share his love of coffee and will be happy to share blends and recipes throughout the evening, based at The Floating Front Room
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Registration

• Due to the nature of Retrofit House as a Victorian terraced house, we kindly ask that you register your place before attending
• We will check you in via eventbrite upon arrival, as capacity in the house is limited and the safety and wellbeing of everyone attending is our number one priority
• If you arrive without registering, we cannot guarantee entry to Re_ Club, but will of course try and welcome you in if possible
• Tickets are limited to one per person. If things change and you're no longer able to attend, please cancel your ticket to allow someone else to visit this time around. We hope you'll come back in future when you're able to visit though!
• Things are a little more open as The Floating Front Room is based on South Loop Park, but it's still helpful to register to let us know you're planning to join

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Who's In The House?

• Household Electronic Repair with Gurdial & Khushmeet
• Upcycling with Natasha Taheem
• Textile Mending with Nosheen Fiaz
  

Who's At The Boat?

• Jewellery Make & Mend with YA Creates
• Ecological Repair with FORIJ
  

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Access & Wellbeing

Re_ Club will take place take place in and around The Floating Front Room at and at the Retrofit House site at .

The Floating Front Room

• The Floating Front Room is a dark green canal boat moored canalside
  
• All paths leading to The Floating Front Room through South Loop Park are flat and accessible. Primarily activities will be held outside where possible, however if you wish to enter the boat itself, please note that access to the boat is by steep steps, so is not accessible to anyone in a wheelchair or for whom steps are a barrier
  
• There is no formal seating outside, but there are benches and blankets available
  
• Unfortunately we currently do not have any toilet facilities available, so please do factor this in when planning your visit
  
• If you plan to enjoy activities over at The Floating Front Room in South Loop Park, please dress to be comfortable outside in weather that may be changeable

Retrofit House

• We regret that access into the house is not currently wheelchair accessible due to both the doorway raised above street level and a narrow entranceway
  
• Activities during Re_Club will take place across three storeys of the house, with steep stairs up to the first and second floor rooms, with no lift available
  
• The house is in the early stages of a strip out process, with flooring uneven in places and many features that need care and repair. Please ensure to navigate carefully
  
• The house has toilet facilities available on both the ground floor and first floor. The main toilet will be on the first floor and the ground floor toilet is available for neighbours with access requirements
  
• All children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult and supervised at all times
  
• Due to the limited space we are unable to accommodate buggies at the house

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How To Show Up

Please be prepared to take an active co-stewardship role together, including:

• being patient and adaptable in taking care of yourself and being considerate of others, particularly at times when the house may become busy or feels crowded
• keeping walkways and corridors clear
• ensuring others have a plate of food before we receive second helpings
• looking out for younger and older visitors
  

and countless other ways we know you will show us in what it means to navigate the barge and house with collective care and sensitivity to the needs and wellbeing of everyone
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Please be considerate and respectful of our neighbours at all times by acting with the shared understanding that you are visiting a public park and a house on a residential street. This includes:

• visiting by public transport and/or active travel wherever possible
• organising for drop offs in taxis or private cars only as needed, with no street parking available on Link Road or the surrounding streets
• not including any residents in photos or video without their explicit consent
• keeping noise to a respectful level, particularly when leaving in the evening

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Please listen and respect any further care guidance shared by our team and practitioners on site, for whom your safety and the safety of others is the number one priority.

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Site As A Classroom

Site As A Classroom is a long-term collective practice to ensure every phase of designing, building, repairing and stewarding our sites is an open, inclusive, and shared opportunity for learning together in our neighbourhood and beyond.
Our intention is for our team, neighbourhood, and wider national and industrial scales to learn from the ongoing demonstration through Neighbourhood Public Square and Retrofit House in real-time, as well as informing how we learn from what the site, ecoregion, neighbourhood, peers, and precedents can continue to teach us, without end.
As we move into the construction phase across our sites this year, Re_ Club will be just one part of a Site As A Classroom approach, and is an open invitation to bring the skills you have, your energy, and curiosity to help shape and co-produce this next phase of discovery and demonstration for the climate transition and retrofit of our homes, streets, and neighbourhoods.
Find out more: bit.ly/PublicSquareDesign

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About The Front Room

For us, The Front Room was phase one of CIVIC SQUARE in 2020—2022, acting as the beginning of an ambitious, long-term neighbourhood platform to meet, connect and co-design together, operating as an initial 3 year prototype designed to transition into the full Neighbourhood Public Square proposal.
COVID-19 illustrated the necessity of adaptive, robust, resourced neighbourhood infrastructure, with The Floating Front Room — our on site neighbourhood cafe, operating from a canal barge — became an unexpected site of mutual aid, food distribution, and a safe(r) meeting point as the effects of the pandemic played out.
The front room of the home holds a significant place for so many cultures and communities, particularly those who immigrated to the UK in the 60s and 70s. From local savings groups to co-operative childcare, the front rooms of our homes and streets are where many people have organised, shared joy, grieved together and grown collective resilience in challenging times. We hoped to honour and continue this tradition of the front room as a noble environment to receive guests, to welcome and be welcomed, and express, share and preserve social and cultural values.
Together we have been exploring:

• What does such a space look like in our neighbourhoods and commons?
• How could it be designed, built and stewarded collectively?
• What inspiration can be taken from the way the front rooms of our homes and streets operate(d) in order to design networked spaces in our places?
  

Read More: Set Up Phase: The Floating Front Room (2020)

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About Retrofit House
"In our communicaties we'll organise and design to normalise space sharing to make the most of the buildings we have. This contributes to a revaluation of the built surroundings to treat them as a form of shared community infrastructure to be card for and made to last longer.
—3°C Neighbourhood

We are starting to prototype at the intersections of reimagining retrofit for 3°C futures at the scale of our homes and streets through Retrofit House as a tangible demonstrator site, working alongside Dark Matter Labs and Material Cultures, asking what a common house for the street could look like.
3°C Neighbourhood calls for the resilience, adaptation and extension of existing buildings for the most effective use of resources, alongside other Reimagined Neighbourhood Fundamentals, all of which have application at the foundational scale of our homes and streets.

"How can we reimagine our relationship with land, material and each other?"
—Retrofit Reimagined 2023

Through Retrofit Reimagined 2022, we outlined the scale of the challenge of retrofit, posed six shifts towards the broader opportunity for reimagination it requires of us, and threw open a warm invitation, acknowledging that there is a role for everyone to bring with them the tools and perspectives they already have.
The Retrofit Reimagined ecosystem of practice now continues in the form of three distinct demonstrator streets across three neighbourhood-based organisations — CIVIC SQUARE, Retrofit Balsall Heath and WeCanMake, alongside a cohort of street incubators from across the UK convened by National Retrofit Hub.
None of us have all the answers, so we need to build, test and try together. Together, we’re excited to be taking early steps for assets to be held within a street entity, starting where we are in our neighbourhood to take housing out of speculation and into common ownership and stewardship by the people who live there.
Whether your connection is through industry, funding, research, construction, artistry, rooted organising and/or everyday life, you are warmly welcome to join us along the journey ahead for Retrofit House, with a role for everyone, starting from where they are.
Explore more: bit.ly/RetrofitHouseCS

Agenda

🕑: 04:00 PM
Dinner Is Served!
🕑: 04:45 PM
Welcome & Introduction
🕑: 05:15 PM
Sessions Begin