Retrofit Street Repair Club
Schedule
Mon, 10 Nov, 2025 at 06:00 pm to Sat, 15 Nov, 2025 at 05:00 pm
UTC+00:00Location
33 Link Rd | Birmingham, EN
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Learn from our neighbours and practice skills to repair our relationships to the land, materials and people in our homes and streets.About this Event
Retrofit Street Repair Club
As part of Retrofit House: Open House, join us to learn and practice skills to repair our relationships to the land, materials and people in our homes and streets. Drawing upon the existing knowledges, skills, passion and creativity around care and repair to be found at every turn in our neighbourhood(s) — including the many wonderful neighbours and practitioners who have already shared so much through Retrofit Street, Neighbourhood Repair Club and Re:Builders so far — we invite you to consider the role you can and would like to play too in the collective care and repair of what matters most to us.
Space is limited inside Retrofit House, so if there are sessions you would love to join please do book your place here or show up early to avoid disappointment.
Lunch and dinner will be served for all visitors to Retrofit House throughout the week, including those attending any Retrofit Street Repair Club sessions.
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SESSIONS
Clean & Green: Natural Cleaning For Our Homes with Netz Derbyshire
Monday 10th November, 6pm—8pm
First Floor
Explore and discover low cost techniques for household cleaning that are healthier for our bodies and the ecosystems we are part of. Inspired by Nancy Birtwhistle's book , CIVIC SQUARE team member and neighbourhood organiser Netz Derbyshire will guide us through swapping harmful cleaning products for everyday natural ingredients such as vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, and help us make a cleaning mix in a bottle to take home.
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Restoring An Antique Door with Andy Nevins
Tuesday 11th November, 11am—3pm
Ground Floor
In this session, Andy Nevins from GUTA will be demonstrating how to restore an antique door which originally opened into the front room of Retrofit House. Such doors are often found in older homes in the UK, and have often had their original details covered or painted over. Here, Andy will share methods to strip paint from an antique door, working to restore the original details and preserve the wood as part of a longer process of maintenance, repair, and reuse.
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Draught Excluder Making with Safina Ali
Tuesday 11th November, 6pm—8pm
First Floor
As winter approaches, help keep your home toasty by making a draught excluder to keep cold air from coming in under doors. Textile repairer and dressmaker Safina Ali will make the cases, ready for you to stuff and hand sew the end. Safina and members of the CIVIC SQUARE team will be on hand to support and no previous experience is required.
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Stripping Back Wall Layers with Andy Nevins
Wednesday 12th November, 11am—3pm
Ground Floor
In this session, Andy Nevins from GUTA will demonstrate how we can investigate damp in our homes by stripping back wallpaper and plaster layers to inspect the underlying structure. Andy will be explaining how to identify sources of water ingress and share examples of how retrofit and repair processes can address both the source and the symptoms of these issues. Together in this session, we will work to better understand the ways that older homes shed water, and how common issues like leaks and damp can be identified and addressed.
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Tap Repair & Household Water Systems with Ernie Holmes
Wednesday 12th November, 6pm—8pm
First Floor
Get to know your taps and the water system in your home with Ernie Holmes, plumber and co-founder of neighbourhood gardening project Warm Earth. Using Retrofit House as an example, Ernie will help us understand how water flows around a building, and share tips for how we can use it more carefully. We will also get hands on with taps to learn how a tap works, and how it can be repaired.
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Winter Planting with Hannah Wright
Friday 14th November, 2pm—4pm
Ground Floor
Join neighbour Hannah Wright to get hands on with soil in the front yard of Retrofit `House as we draw on their wisdom to learn how to prepare planting for the winter months ahead.
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Gutters & Street Missions with Andy Nevins
Saturday 15th November, 11am—5pm
Ground Floor
In the final Retrofit Street Repair Club of the week, we will be joined again by Andy Nevins of GUTA to explore one or the most common sources of water damage in UK houses: faulty gutters. Beginning in the garden of Retrofit House, we will learn about the basics of gutter repair and maintenance, and travel to other homes on the street as a set of neighbourhood repair missions.
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PRACTICAL INFO
Open House activities will take place in and around the Retrofit House site on Link Road, Ladywood, Birmingham, B16 0EP.
As we take early stewardship of Retrofit House together alongside our incredible neighbours, we are very committed and excited to keep the site as open as possible as a place of learning, demonstration and shared possibility throughout the design, retrofit works and collective stewardship ahead. In order to make this work, we invite you to adhere to some important principles and take postures of collective care to keep each other safe and well on site.
— 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
— During Open House week, activity will take place across three storeys of the house, with steep stairs up to the first and second floor rooms, with no assistive capacity such as a lift available. This may pose challenges for those with limited mobility, and we will clearly label which activities are taking place at ground level to support you to plan your visit with these limitations of the existing infrastructure in mind
— 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 and look out for each other
— 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 corridors and walkways 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 house with collective care and sensitivity to the needs and wellbeing of everyone
— All children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult
— The house has toilet facilities available on both the ground floor and first floor
— Please be considerate and respectful of our neighbours at all times by acting with the shared understanding that you are visiting a house on a residential street. This includes:
+ visiting Retrofit House 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 if visiting Retrofit House in the evening
— Please treat the material library and other displays with care, and be advised not to touch the exposed materials of the house's built fabric. This is for your own safety and wellbeing, as well as ensuring future visitors can continue to enjoy and learn from these shared resources after you, over the longer term
— 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 their number one priority
If further information would support your visit, please contact Brodie on . You can also let us know about any specific access requirements you may have during the sign up process, and where possible we will of course seek to meet these, whilst also being honest about the limitations of the current infrastructure where needed to ensure you have any information you may need before attending.
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Retrofit House: Open House
Retrofit House will open its doors for a week-long exploration of how we reimagine retrofit to meet +3°C futures at the scale of our homes and streets, taking place 10th — 15th November 2025 in Birmingham, UK.
We invite you into a living site of learning and demonstration to rehearse what a common house for our street/s could look and feel like. This includes the skills it will take to care for our shared infrastructure, the tensions and contradictions to be found in the materials we will need to re/use, and the kinds of governance that can help us steward it together.
Bringing together neighbours, builders, repairers, gardeners, designers, researchers, organisers, funders, artists, activists, and curious visitors of all ages, together we will gather for workshops, talks, co-builds, screenings, shared meals and more, with a continued role for everyone in the reimagination of our relationship/s to land, materials and each other in order to face the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead together.
For more about Retrofit House: Open House Week visit: Discover the full programme at: bit.ly/RetrofitOpen`Events
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Where is it happening?
33 Link Rd, 33 Link Road, Birmingham, United KingdomEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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