AJ Climate Champions podcast: ‘Retrofit is seen as really alienating. We’re trying to blow that apart’

Melissa Mean from community land trust WeCanMake explains how a community-led approach in Bristol is tackling the housing crisis

‘What if the power and resources to make good homes were in the hands of our communities? What if you literally put the tools in people’s hands to design and make your own homes?’ asks WeCanMake founder Melissa Mean. For over a decade, community land trust WeCanMake has been doing exactly that, developing a bottom-up, community-led approach to ‘gentle densification’ in Bristol that builds social infrastructure and community wealth.

WeCanMake is pioneering a new approach to housing delivery on the Knowle West estate, an interwar housing estate of 5,000 homes in south Bristol. At its heart is an opt-in scheme whereby eligible social housing tenants gift a ‘microsite’ from their garden to someone with a housing need to build a home in their back garden. The components for the houses are cut to size by local residents in a neighbourhood micro-factory equipped with laser cutters and 3D printers, then delivered to site for assembly.

The project started small with two prototype single-storey affordable homes now complete, two in planning and two more in the pipeline. Mean estimates that this approach could be rolled out in similar neighbourhoods across the UK to deliver more than 30,000 homes with just a 3 per cent increase in density.

In this episode, Mean also describes current work with Mikhail Riches to explore the spatial transformation of Knowle West’s three-bedroom one-bath homes into four-bed two-bath houses. This holistic approach makes retrofit a game-changer that transforms residents’ lives by simultaneously reducing overcrowding and improving comfort by addressing thermal performance and air quality. It also makes the hassle of retrofit much more appealing.

Working with WaughThistleton, WeCanMake is now tackling larger sites such as small car parks and derelict garages and developing a kit of parts for low-rise buildings (below 11m). Mean describes the multiple challenges of obtaining approvals for the use of bio-based materials.

Mean believes that staying small and collaborating has enabled WeCanMake to ‘punch above its weight’. She describes an ecosystem of similar community-led organisations delivering housing, including Civic Square and Maia Group in Birmingham, Nudge in Plymouth and Hastings Commons in Hastings (AJ Climate Champions episode #54).

‘We lean into the power and the joy of small. Knowle West and other neighbourhoods like it, can be the future of housing,’ says Mean.

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About Melissa Mean

A former Demos associate with a background in public policy, Mean is a rare AJ Climate Champion who is not an architect. In 2020, Mean founded WeCanMake, a community interest company and community land trust, as part of Bristol-based arts and tech collective Knowle West Media Centre where she has worked since 2012. Her strategic policy background has enabled her to navigate the complexity of planning and financial barriers to housing delivery and develop a unique place-based approach.

Five of WeCanMake’s current 10-strong team are trained as architects, and WeCanMake continues to collaborate with an impressive roster of architectural practices.