About this Event
Come join us for a hands-on session to get the Rodfords Mead site ready for a spring and summer full of workshops and activities!
You're invited to the Rodfords Mead site to help us spring clean it, ready for a programme of events over the summer. We’ll also be running a series of ‘making together’ workshops where we’ll get locals involved in aspects of the site, such as building benches and installing water butts to capture rainwater.
The site will eventually become a community space, and we’d love to test out possible ideas of events that might happen here in the future. At this event you can:
- Get your bicycle checked with Dr Bike
- Help install a water butt to capture rain
- Wake up your garden with seedlings
- Free DanDan’s coffee and food for every helper!
Want to run a pop up cafe, market, yoga or zumba class, book club, film screening or something else over the summer? Get in touch with Tay, our Community Participation Lead. We’d love to hear from you at [email protected]
What we are building
WeCanMake are building six genuinely affordable homes with a community space for local people, on a former garage site in Rodfords Mead, Hengrove. The former garages between number 32 and 34 Rodfords Mead were demolished in the early 2000s and the site has been vacant since. The site was put into community ownership as part of Bristol City Council’s innovative land disposal policy.
WeCanMake worked with the community to reimagine what the site could be, turning their ideas into tangible designs. At the end of 2025, the neighbourhood’s vision for the site won planning permission, after only 100 days! (https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-features/news/community-led-development-gets-the-green-light/) Construction will start in the Autumn of 2026, and we’re hoping to welcome our first residents into the homes by the end of 2027.
WeCanMake is a ‘community land trust’, which means the homes and community space will always stay in community ownership, and can’t be sold on. The homes will be rented out through Bristol City Council’s Home Choice social housing register. Future residents will pay social rent.
This site has been designed by the community for the community, and we have plenty of upcoming opportunities to get involved as we move towards construction.
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.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Rodfords Mead, Rodfords Mead, Bristol, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
