WeCanMake Meet Up – November

Our neighbourhood is a living demonstration of how change can happen from the bottom up, with local people imagining, designing and testing the futures they want for themselves and their community. Together, we can care, repair and adapt our homes, streets and neighbourhood in many ways that support us to live well, and to better meet our changing needs over time. We can do this in ways that are joyful, sociable, and bring us together to build value at the neighbourhood level.

Over the last year, WeCanMake, residents of Andover Road and researchers have been figuring out how to make people's homes warmer, drier, and cosier. But also, we've been imagining and testing out different ways of expanding the homes inside and out to create more space for growing families with changing needs, and exploring different kinds of materials that are good for people and planet.
Knowle West has 5,000 homes that were all built around a similar time, and are in a similar condition today. What we've discovered together on Andover Road may be able to tell us a lot about the other homes in the estate – for example, where the cold spots are, where the damp gets in, and even the way sound travels from house to house.
That's why we now want to share these discoveries with the rest of the neighbourhood!

You are warmly invited to join us at our community micro-factory for a special showcase where you can find out about the neighbourhood "retrofit" action taking place in Knowle West, and learn how you too can play a role in the care, repair and adaptation of your home, your street, and the wider neighbourhood.

Programme (timings tbc)

• Make a draught excluder : Stop those wintery chills from creeping in! Decorate, stuff and sew a draught excluder for yourself or as a gift;
• The Future Is Already Here film screening: The film tells the story of Retrofit Reimagined – a festival celebrating community action, which invites others to come together to imagine how our streets, neighbourhoods and cities might be “retrofitted” and adapted to meet the growing challenges we face;
• Talks and workshops: Hear from residents of our local 'Retrofit Street' and other pioneering voices shaping neighbourhood retrofit across the country;
• Tips on how to get your home winter ready;
• Food and drink.

* Retrofit meant to adapt or enhance something for a new purpose. Our definition of retrofit extends beyond its traditional application to buildings (ie. Solar panels and insulation), to includes spatial, nature, and social relations. The aim is to support communities to better respond to changing needs over time.

We'll be hosting regular community meetups every 3rd Thursday of the month! Come along and meet your neighbours, take part in some crafting and let us know what you'd like to see at future Community Meetups. Refreshments will be provided.

About WeCanMake

WeCanMake is a neighbourhood test-space for imagining and making new ways to create homes that build social infrastructure and community wealth. Rooted in the council-built estate of Knowle West, Bristol, we are a Community Interest Company, operate as a community land trust, and are part of art and tech collective Knowle West Media Centre.

WeCanMake has developed a new model to do housing differently, and through creative community-driven innovation. This includes creating a new supply of land for community-led homes, charting a new route through the planning system, using Modern Methods of Construction to diversify and localise the production of new homes, and creating a bottom-up approach to tracking impact and social value.

Over the coming months, WeCanMake will be running a series of workshops for other communities, neighbourhoods, and local authorities interested in adapting and adopting the model to their own context.

Interested in attending an upcoming workshop? .

Host or Publisher We Can Make