Imagining and making new ways to create homes

WeCanMake and CoLab Dudley team members during a learning exchange

Last week I jumped on a train to Bristol to spend the day with WeCanMake. They are responding to the housing crisis by asking: What if the power and resources to create good homes were in the hands of communities? They take a people and place-led approach to housing innovation, and are embedded in and working with the community of a 100-year old council-built estate in Knowle West.

I was there with Dudley CVS Associate Jo Orchard-Webb to introduce the We Can Make team to a particular approach to evaluation that we’ve been using in CoLab Dudley since 2018. It is called Principles-Focused Evaluation, and we haven’t yet met anyone else in the UK using it. So we’re always very happy to share how we use it, how to get started with it, and our top tips – some have been learned from messing up a few times!

CoLab Dudley team members introducing the WeCanMake team to Principles-Focused Evaluation

We were particularly happy to be asked by WeCanMake to spend a day exploring how we learn and evaluate, as they are another of JRF’s Emerging Futures Pathfinders, along with CoLab Dudley. Their team, made up of people with experience in an architecture, design, communications, governance and more, took to the approach very readily. Melissa, Director of WeCanMake told us that it “really felt like a natural fit and evolution. And a real privilege to be able to build from all the work you’ve done developing and applying the practice.”

It has been energising and inspiring for us to learn more about the work that WeCanMake do. And to see their factory where the walls and cladding of low carbon homes for residents of Knowle West have been made by local people, including the families they have been designed for. Check out this moving 16 minute documentary short film hear the stories of John, Toni and Bill, see how the WeCanMake model works on the ground, and how it could be scaled and replicated by other communities across the country.

If you’re eager to connect with this kind of work and explore ways that this and more could become a response to the housing crisis in neighbourhoods in Dudley do check out the upcoming Retrofit Reimagined Festival. Starting this month and taking place in Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, London and Machynlleth, the festival is working to redefine our relationship with the built environment, and its foundational systems of land, materials and people.

On 6 October, WeCanMake and Knowle West Media Centre will be hosting a hands-on day to dig deep into what “retrofit” means at the neighbourhood level, in a day of making, walking, walking, and eating! See:

CoLab Dudley have been invited to contribute to Retrofit Reimagined at Moseley Road Baths in Birmingham on 15 – 16 September, and you can too (or just simply come along).

This blog post is one in a series about Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Emerging Futures Pathfinders. CoLab Dudley is among 22 initiatives they have identified as working day in, day out, to reimagine and redesign the world they want to live in, and the world they hope to leave behind. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation have shared observations on characteristics present in this future-building work.

Getting to know more about WeCanMake has really brought to life ways in which Pathfinders are working to reveal what else needs redesigning as they build:

Through their work, the pathfinders are learning through doing about the nature of transitions work, and the barriers that present themselves along the way. These are organisations who uncover what else needs re-imagining and redesigning as they go – for example, regulations, governance, legal frameworks.

WeCanMake’s 7 ingredients for unlocking micro-sites offer a tangible illustration of this:

1. Enable gentle densification
2. Build homes at point of need
3. Create a new supply of land
4. Empower the community to set the rules
5. Make low carbon homes locally
6. Define affordability in terms of income
7. Measure what matters