The Growth Lab Experience
Community-led housing, (CLH), is a growing trend in the UK, with more and more communities taking control of their housing needs. This trend is now expanding to high streets, where CLH projects are being developed to address the lack of affordable housing in city centres. High streets, traditionally the commercial heart of a city, are now being seen as potential hubs for sustainable living.
The ‘Industry Growth Pilot’ was funded by Laudes Foundation and delivered by Community Land Trust Network and UK Cohousing Network. They were looking for entrepreneurial researchers — individuals or small teams who were passionate about addressing a specific problem facing the growth of CLH to develop a solution with the potential for replication and scale and investment. Nationally three teams were chosen to participate. Durham Community Action formed a team with Communities CAN (the lead organisation) and the Rural Design Centre.
Successful teams were then invited on a 6-months learning journey, dedicated to creating replicable services or products that would help the movement to scale community led housing. The journey focused on researching and testing assumptions and solutions with customers, users, and investors The team were then invited to a gathering of funders, investors and sector stakeholders to pitch our proposal.
The work took the Team all over the Northeast to some really super projects. We learned what worked and what the major challenges were. Along the way we had three workshops to help give us the tools to explore and think differently. Communities CAN as ever demonstrated their deep knowledge and experience of CLH whereas the Rural Design Centre added a new dimension of discovery and innovation.
The difficulty was that at the beginning we all had different styles of working and no clear roles within the team. In addition, endless lists of clever people and large organisations had looked at the subject many times before so finding our own unique product or service seemed like a long road to nowhere!
Yet a week ago today we pitched our innovative idea to a national panel. We had fun creating it and learned a lot along the way. On the day there was a great deal of positivity around our idea and proposal. We are yet to hear if we have been successful, but the exposure was invaluable. The Panel included representatives from the North of Tyne Combined Authority who sat alongside the government body, Homes England. That’s not the type of opportunity that comes along very often!
We have now created an ‘oven ready’ investment proposal should Local Authorities or Combined Authorities wish to buy in in this type of support. We also have some links that have been sent to us of funders that might be interested in supporting this initiative. The worst outcome would be that nothing further comes of this. My role with CLH is likely to be ramping up in the coming weeks and I would like nothing better than some additional support and another tool for my toolbox to promote CLH so I am fervently hoping the plan grows its own legs! There are several post meeting reviews booked in the coming weeks where the future potential should become a little clearer.
In conclusion watch this space!
