With a design inspired by garden city principles and homes built “fit for heroes” as a response to the horrors of the Great War, Knowle West was conceived as part of a bold future vision of how we wanted to live better together. A century later, Knowle West needs to be the future again, this time addressing today’s twin challenges of the housing crisis and the climate emergency - and showing how an asset-based, landscape-led approach can create good homes and a neighbourhood “fit for people and planet”.
So what if the climate transition and retrofit of our homes and streets were designed, owned and governed by the people who live here? Knowle West, and the many other neighbourhoods like it, already has an abundance of resources and knowhow to help meet the challenge. We are a living demonstrator showing how change can happen when you put the power and tools in community hands. Join us in our neighbourhood for a hands-on day and explore deep retrofit through workshops, talks, demonstrations, rambles and good food.
Your hosts for the day will be WeCanMake and Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC).
Retrofit Reimagined in Knowle West, Bristol
WeCanMake is a neighbourhood test space imaging and making new ways to create homes that build social infrastructure and community wealth. Our mission is to grow the spaces, tools and capacities to collectively imagine and actively anticipate better ways to do housing, which is why we put the tools and resources to create good homes in the hands of the local community.
We have created a model for unlocking micro-sites to build affordable homes, but we also focus on meeting household needs in new, community-led ways. This means not treating housing delivery in isolation, but thinking about the infrastructure that supports the wider neighbourhood to thrive. WeCanMake is part of arts and tech collective, Knowle West Media Centre, a place-based arts and digital organisation that has been working in and with the local community of Knowle West since 1996.