The Neighbourhood Futures Festival is held annually at the Red Shed, Edgbaston Reservoir (one of the green spaces run by Birmingham Settlement ). The festival is set in the heart of Ladywood, where communities can come together to appreciate the beautiful views of Birmingham, exercise, grow plants and food, discuss paths to a better world and appreciate the nature around them. All in all it’s a classic “Third Place”.
Neighbourhood Futures – Day 1
I went on the first day of this year’s festival, and I found Neighbourhood Futures a great way to connect with people from the local community workers space: people who are working in vital areas to provide neighbourhoods with help in the troubled times that we are experiencing. Below are a few of the many subjects that we touched upon in the course of the seminars and discussions that took place over the day:
The Polycrisis
A simple way to define the Polycrisis is “a crisis of crises”, and this was a major theme of Neighbourhood Futures. The Polycrisis affects everyone in the world, and on a local level this includes the crisis of how climate and environmental breakdown will affect our neighbourhoods, the cost of living crisis (that incorporates the energy crisis), the lack of good quality, affordable housing to buy or rent (the housing crisis) and more.
Resilient Neighbourhoods
As Climate and environmental breakdown deepens, there are safeguards that need to be put in place to make our communities ready. Fortunately not all of the protective measures that need to be considered need be complex or costly.
Climate Hacks
For instance, if you live in an area that could be threatened by floods then think carefully about the placement of items that are valuable for you. Naturally the higher they are placed from the ground the safer they’ll be. Conversely, closing your curtains on a very hot day can help render the heat a little more bearable. And of course, we need to check on people that are more vulnerable to extremes in climate.
Mapping Birmingham
It should go without saying that there is more to safeguarding our Neighbourhood Futures than these simple “hacks”. Thus we discussed issues including the placement of buildings so they are less vulnerable to extreme weather, the growing of more trees to combat the heat island effect and mapping the city of Birmingham so we know which places are the wettest, and which are the hottest local neighbourhoods
DID YOU KNOW? A car will float when flood depths reach 30cm!
Retrofit
The concept of retrofit, which means refurbishing an existing building or apartment to make it energy efficient by modern standards and more environmentally friendly, has become a very significant part of the development and construction sectors in recent times. It is therefore critical to our Neighbourhood Futures.
Who Can You Trust?
Because it is still a relatively new sector, navigating the different companies that advertise these services to find a good quality and trustworthy provider can still be something of a minefield. It doesn’t help that the sector is still unregulated.
Here in Birmingham there are some local companies that come recommended to us, like Effective Eco, but they are extremely busy.
Over to You!
Are you thinking of retrofitting your home?
Come and speak to us first!
Contact: Birchfield Community Association
on 07421 128202 or email: jeremy@birchfield.org.uk
Have you had a cold call advising you that retrofit services are appropriate for your property?
Have you been quoted a price? Come and speak to us before you make any decisions!
To learn more about Retrofit you can visit Birmingham Green Doors, which showcases energy efficient homes in the West Midlands.
Liveable Spaces
Everyone knows, or has a sense of what makes a good place to live, and of the things that you need from your home in order to help you to lead a secure and fulfilling life. Thus we had a fascinating workshop with LivedIn, a company dedicated to bringing development to the people.
Everyone Knows Good Homes
In brief, LivedIn work with individuals, families and communities to design individual or multiple homes. Their principle is that because we all have a sense of what makes a liveable home in liveable surroundings, then we can all have effective input into the design of our own living spaces, as long as we are not bogged down with technical jargon and overbearing bureaucracy, which LivedIn attempts to mitigate or do away with as much as possible.
Building Your Dreamhome
Among the many ways in which you could independently build your own home are going “off grid” and building without permission (a strategy that comes with risks) and taking over and rebuilding or refurbishing abandoned buildings (as an illlustration we were shown a project where an old abandoned church was being turned into a home). There were also community land trusts, where a neighbourhood comes together to buy its own land, build affordable housing on it and forge its own future.
DID YOU KNOW? There is a community land trust in Stourbridge, West Midlands.
The Message of Climate Justice
The Climate and Ecological Emergency is arguably the greatest crisis that faces all neighbourhoods on Earth. As global temperatures rise and animal species disappear into extinction, it may already be too late to avoid a fundamental shift in the way we all live our lives.
How Does This Affect me?
Even though we are living through another heatwave, climate breakdown can seem a distant threat when you’re worried about paying your bills and putting food on your table day to day. This is why it is not enough to sound the warning about climate change, we must aim for, and talk about climate justice: which is helping the most vulnerable and least privileged in society, who are also the most prone to being adversely affected by climate breakdown.
What do you think?
In summary how we talk about, and how we can effectively communicate the concept of Climate Justice is an ongoing issue. We’re always looking to improve our communications, so if you have any thoughts we’d love to hear from you!
International Solidarity
As we discussed there is a polycrisis facing the world, and these crises come in many forms: including the spectre of war. If you have any presence on social media, you will have encountered the horrific images coming from the Middle East, particularly Gaza, in recent times. How do these international crises affect our neighbourhood futures?
Oil and War
A big driver behind the wars in the Middle East is the greed for resources, particularly fossil fuels. The availability, or otherwise, of these fossil fuels affects our petrol prices and our energy bills, which feeds our cost of living crisis. It is also fossil fuels that enable the proliferation of cars, and this affects everything from the safety of active travel, to the accessibility of our streets to our air quality.
At the Sharp End
Climate Justice is an international issue. This is because it is the poorest countries, and the countries that have contributed least towards the emissions that feed climate breakdown, that will be most severely affected. Hence we must all be conscious of international solidarity.
Think Global, Act Local!
Weaving Climate Stories
To conclude the day I was privileged to attend a workshop called “weaving climate stories”, hosted by some representatives of Sau Paulo university, who told us about their “Foot On Earth” project. This project is designed to help the Favelas in Sau Paulo grow their own food.
Foot on Earth
As part of this project, communities within the Favela gather together to build a stone clay oven, which they dedicate to their ancestors as they dance the Jongo. We looked at the process of building the stone clay oven and shared the feelings that this invoked within us, while sampling traditional Brazilian snacks.
A Place for Nature
A final thought: the nature and climate crises are inextricably linked, but it was heartening to spend the day in such a beautiful green space in the heart of Birmingham, and our talks had a constant background noise of the wind rustling in the trees, the call of birds and the buzzing of pollinators that visited the many flowers in Birmingham Settlement.
DID YOU KNOW? – Birmingham has been an international Biophilic city since 2013! It has also been recognised as a Tree City of the world for six years in a row!
