The event turned out really well! We had 20 people along, and we divided into four groups to discuss a variety of questions and then feed back to the whole group. The questions we discussed were:
What is cohousing? What do you already know about it?
Why cohousing? What do you hope to get out of it? What about it might be difficult?
Cohousing obstacles? What obstacles might the community face? What could we do about them? Who could help?
Your ideal? What would your ideal community be like? What kind of people? What communal facilities would you like? What would individual homes be like?
Where do we go from here?
Feedback on all these questions is being collated through the kind efforts of Sue Coomber and Stuart Martin. I’ll post this up sometime in the near-ish future.
I had just come across a Birmingham community-led housing group that meets out of the Impact Hub in Digbeth, and mentioned them towards the end of the meeting. The feeling of the meeting was that we should be working closely with them, and other such groups. I’ve also just followed up a lead to a housing initiative for older LGBT people in Birmingham, will be meeting up with a representative week beginning 4th December.
Cohousing West Midlands 