WeCanMake July Meet Up: Keeping Cool

Join us to learn practical ways to keep your home and neighbourhood cool in the heat and enjoy a shared meal with your neighbours.
About this Event

After a set of record breaking heat in June , our July meet-up will explore how we can keep cool during periods of hot weather, both in our homes and in our neighbourhoods. Together, we’ll share simple, practical tips for staying comfortable during a heatwave and consider how our living spaces can help us adapt to rising temperatures.

We’ll spend some time talking about how heat affects our health and wellbeing, and why it’s important to prepare our homes to stay cool. We’ll also share ideas from our work on creating homes that are better able to respond to changing climates.

We’ll explore how small, thoughtful actions can make a big difference, not just for us, but for our more-than-human neighbours too.

And as always, we’ll do some making together! This month, we’ll get hands-on experimenting with different ways to keep cool from yogurt on windows to micro-ponds as easy additions to gardens, balconies or shared spaces that can help wildlife stay cool and hydrated during hot weather. All materials will be provided, but feel free to bring along anything you’d like to use or share.

In keeping with our theme we'll be inviting the folks from Happy Cow Ice Cream to join us with free vegan ice creams, as well as lots of refreshments and snacks for everyone to enjoy. Everyone is welcome, so invite your friends, family and neighbours to join too.

Join us to:

🌿 Learn practical ways to keep your home and yourself cool
🛠️ Get hands-on making micro-ponds for local wildlife
🌞 Share ideas for caring for our more-than-human neighbours in the heat
🍕 Enjoy a shared meal
🤝 Connect with WeCanMake and others in the community
🫶 Know a neighbour or someone who could use a cool, welcoming space? Bring them along!

About WeCanMake

We host community meetups every 3rd Thursday of the month! Come along and meet your neighbours, chat, and get hands on making together.

WeCanMake is a community land trust and neighbourhood system demonstrator working towards more regenerative futures. Our North Star mission is: “everyone has access to a decent and affordable home delivered within safe planetary boundaries”.

WeCanMake works to create little pockets of the future in the present, tangibly demonstrating what alternative regenerative futures can look and feel like in our homes, streets, neighbourhoods. We do this in four ways:

· Creation of new homes through infill development of existing settlements. WeCanMake has delivered two low-carbon 100% affordable homes so far and has 34 more homes in its development pipeline. Homes and land are held in our community land trust, with affordability and long-term community benefit locked in.

· Retrofit of existing homes. Our people and place-led approach to retrofit includes biomaterial fabric improvements, spatial enhancement, and green infrastructure. WeCanMake currently has retrofit work underway with 6 homes on a demonstration street in Knowle West and have set up a Neighbourhood Trade Crew to undertake the work.

· Democratising and localising the means of production. WeCanMake focuses on using low-carbon and locally sourced bio- and re-use materials for construction. In our neighbourhood factory (shared with KWMC) we train local people to use digital fabrication kit to make components for the homes, creating future-facing local skills, jobs, and community wealth.

· Community stewardship and agency. WeCanMake takes a collaborative approach to housing whereby residents aren't treated as just consumers or service beneficiaries; but instead are invited to be active citizens in the management and maintenance of their homes, and, in the process, help build a stronger sense of collective agency, security, and belonging in our homes, streets, and neighbourhoods.