WeCanMake Meet Up – October

We love neighbourhoods! When everything else feels a bit big and overwhelming – from the state of the economy to the climate – neighbourhoods feel very human in scale. The ‘hood is where we take root, connect with people and place, and feel a sense of ownership and belonging.

At WeCanMake, we are focused on how we can help build a sense of collective agency within our neighbourhoods. We know resources are scarce and commercial forces dominate, but when we work together at neighbourhood level, brilliant and beautiful things can still push through the cracks.

In this meet-up we’ll be hearing from three neighbourhood experiments all aimed at growing the community stewardship of spaces, buildings, and infrastructure in our neighbourhoods:

Rodford Dreams, Hengrove Bristol: WeCanMake has taken stewardship of a neglected garage site in Hengrove, transforming it from a fly-tipped mess to a welcoming space where over summer the local community has been invited to imagine and try-out different uses for the future of the site. We will be telling the story of the resident co-design sessions, and sharing some of the emerging designs for the site, and ideas for how creating shared community assets in this way could be repeated and scaled in other neighbourhoods.

Pollinator Pathways, Knowle Bristol: Local resident Flora Beverley has been working with her neighbours to transform a forgotten alleyway into a pollinator superhighway. Planters, murals, lights, and a whole lot of energy and love are part of the “how to” mix Flora will be sharing; and talking about the potential network power of linking up more of these neighbourhood gap spaces in ways that are good for pollinators and people.

Dream Bench Project, Ladywood Birmingham: Our friends at Civic Square in Birmingham have been making and distributing tiny benches around their neighbourhood of Ladywood in Birmingham. It is part of a project to reimagine how their streets can be friendlier and healthier by identifying spots where space could be made for people to linger and rest.

The Dream Benches are part of The Library of Social Infrastructure, an open-source recipe book of furniture and other kit that WeCanMake co-created with Better Block to help communities reclaim neighbourhood space for people and nature.

The Dream Bench Project illuminates how a first step towards more community stewardship can be really tiny, yet still transformative in terms of how people see and relate to their neighbourhood and to each other. Civic Square will be sharing their tiny neighbourhood Dream Bench adventures so far.

We’ll be talking about how we can learn from these experiments to scale community stewardship; and mapping other spaces, sites, and ideas in our own neighbourhoods where people can see and feel fertile ground for growing community stewardship.

We’ll also be making together mini-versions of the Library of Social Infrastructure kit, and thinking about how/where we could use them to spark something new in our own streets and neighbourhoods. 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? .

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

KWMC The Factory, Hengrove Way, Bristol, United Kingdom