Co-creating the future
How Big Local areas can lead or influence physical change.
The built environment – homes, shops, streets and open spaces – play an important part in our wellbeing and happiness. It has a direct impact on how strong and resourceful communities are.
This one-off workshop, led by Create Streets, aimed to build knowledge, confidence and understanding about community-led development and share effective ways to influence local, physical change.
This event explored:
- The increasing resources available to develop land and build homes
- How to develop neighbourhood plans which guide future development
- Collating or encouraging responses to public consultations
- Creating designs for community-led development
- How to influence councillors or developers.
Speakers
Several knowledgeable and experienced experts were part of this event.
Stephen Hill is a Director at C20 futureplanners, is an experienced and leading exponent of Community Land Trusts, with forty years of experience of housing, planning and delivering mixed-use development, urban extensions, new settlements, and community-led neighbourhood regeneration. He is currently Chair of the UK Cohousing Network and a board member of the National Community Land Trust Network.
Melissa Mean manages the Arts Programme at Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC). Her work includes producing a wide range of digital, photographic and film projects, and exploring the role that the arts can play in business development, social action and regeneration. One project focuses on citizen-led infill housing in Knowle West, Bristol with We Can Make.
Nicholas Boys Smith is the founding Director of Create Streets and has run or is running a wide range of early stage, community engagement, planning and local government consultation projects. Nicholas is currently co-chair of the Government’s Building Better Building Beautiful Commission and is a Commissioner of Historic England.
Helen Nicol is a community-led housing development manager at Locality and founder of Blue Chula, a consultancy specialising in community development & engagement, collaboration & partnership working and change & programme management.
Calum Green has taken London CLT from having its first site identified, to actively organising campaigns in 11 neighbourhoods, 6 of which have provisional agreements on sites, including in Tower Hamlets, Lewisham, Southwark, Croydon, Redbridge and on the Olympic Park. Calum was also previously a Senior Organiser with Citizens UK, where he trained over 400 community leaders across the UK.
Rose Seagrief leads on Power to Change’s (A charitable trust that supports and develops community businesses in England) Homes in Community Hands Programme and is responsible for our Community Business Advisory Panel. Rose has spent the past 10 years working with many communities that wish to own and develop their own assets, such as affordable homes, shops, pubs, start-up work units, and a range of other community facilities and open space.
About Create Streets
Create Streets exists to help solve the housing crisis and to help communities and developers create street-based places that will be popular with the wider community and are likely to be correlated with good wellbeing outcomes.
Our goal is to make it easier to develop high density, beautiful, street-based economically and socially successful developments with strong local support and which residents will love for generations.