One of us went up to Sheffield (by train) to attend a set of presentations made by architectural students of Sheffield University. The program is run by Sam Brown, who was our advisor on behalf of West Midlands Urban Community Homes (wMUCH). It was a surprisingly entertaining day. The students are divided into 18 groups of 12, and assigned real-life projects to work on with partners in the community, for a period of six weeks. There was a great variety of projects. Urban renewal, in terms of beloved but tired buildings, and in terms of street scenes. New buildings for e.g. schools and parks. Studies into sources of finance, and into Modern Methods of Construction (MMC). In every case, these real-life clients had their expectations exceeded. CoHoWM would like to take part in this program in the future.
Over the course of the day, I had a lot of informal chats, and people were intrigued with the idea of cohousing.
We also attended a virtual cafe hosted by the UK Cohousing Network to talk about the launch of their updated Practical Guide to Cohousing. This version has much more helpful information and advice about Equality, Diversity and Inclusion – and its available both online, and in hardcopy.
We did a lot of work designing one of those pull-up banners, for when we start having public meetings. This is the latest version of the banner. The banner is an exercise in storytelling in the broadest sense. We hope it will tell the story of the fundamental point of the CoHoWM project; of the kind of community we want to build; and something of our attitude towards nature. Comments gratefully received.
Cohousing West Midlands 