Join us at this special session to explore the findings from the 2023 Community Led Housing Growth Lab. The event will examine how service design and action research can create replicable patterns to increase growth in the sector and scale up community led housing models.
This session will be an opportunity to take an in-depth look at the work and findings of the Growth Lab. We will then invite all attendees to discuss the opportunities to discuss the opportunities to strengthen an ecosystem of intermediaries capable of delivering community led housing at a significant scale.
This session is for individuals, CLTs, and other organisations that are supportive of Community Led Housing to discuss the opportunities to strengthen an ecosystem of intermediaries that can deliver community led housing at a significant scale.
What is the Community Led Housing Growth Lab?
Following a year of reflection and research on sector growth and barriers after the Community Housing Fund, and our State of the Sector 2023 report, we developed the CLH Growth Lab as a way to develop intermediaries capable of growing more scalable forms of CLT projects. Throughout 2023, the Community Led Housing Growth Lab supported three organisations to explore these models for growth. These models and services are designed to overcome the perennial barriers of finance, land, planning, expertise and community capability.
The three models explored were:
- Communities CAN – how community led housing projects, councils, developers and housing associations can work together to address our declining highstreets
- Middlemarch CLH – how the South West’s successful Rural Housing Association partnerships can be scaled and grown in other parts of England and Wales
- We Can Make – how their Bristol based “suburban densification” infill method can become a replicable product which is facilitated elsewhere to meet housing need
The Growth Lab is a collaboration between the Community Land Trust Network and the UK Cohousing Network, and is delivered with Design Council Expert and Nesta Associate Steve Lee. We are very grateful to this programme’s funders, the Laudes Foundation and the Nationwide Foundation, for their generous support.
Please email [email protected] with any questions. We will send out the Zoom joining link before the session.