Retrofitting homes and neighbourhoods helps us "embrace the wholesale reimagination of how we live together", says Civic Square's Immy Kaur

Above is a new film from Civic Square and Immy Kaur - our great comrades in so much cosmolocalism - centring on their #RetrofitReimagined festival last autumn. It’s full of instances and ideas around making the “retrofit” of our homes and neighbourhoods an attractive and convivial prospect.

Here’s the blurb:

What if the climate transition and retrofit of our homes and streets were designed, owned and governed by the people who live there?

The #RetrofitReimagined film takes us on a journey across the UK in Autumn 2023. During the second Retrofit Reimagined Festival, we explored the power of neighbourhood-led retrofit through the core theme of rebuilding our relationships with the land, the materials we consume, and our relationships with each other.

We know retrofit should not only see the home, street, and neighbourhood as key strategic sites for decarbonisation, but also places of deep imagination for addressing the inequalities of wider, interlinked systems, of which our built environment sits at the heart.

Particularly for those most vulnerable in our communities, it is vital that we embrace the wholesale reimagination of how we live together - from the scale of the neighbourhood to systems-level transformation.

Join us as we share a film that shows that this future is already here. Neighbourhoods across the country are leading the way — whether it’s thinking about the foundations of the next economy or demonstrating them in the smallest most immediate ways in our streets.

The Retrofit Reimagined 2023 festival season highlighted the deep knowledge, skills, commitment and practice emerging to meet one of the greatest challenges of our time. From those who have been working in the field building the foundations for decades, to those joining their practice and creativity to the retrofit movement for the first time, this film is a celebration of the deep hope, possibility, rigour and skills across the UK.

The film also acts as an invitation to the next government to support the scale of transformation enabled by our neighbourhoods, through a bold, transformative, and people-powered retrofit manifesto.

Retrofit Reimagined 2023 was hosted in partnership between:

+ ACAN | http://www.architectscan.org + Anthropocene Architecture School | http://www.linktr.ee/AnthropoceneArch... + BE-ST | http://www.be-st.build + CIVIC SQUARE | http://www.civicsquare.cc + Dark Matter Labs | http://www.darkmatterlabs.org + Home Energy Action Lab (HEAL) | / home_energy_action_lab + WeCanMake | http://www.wecanmake.org + zero carbon house | http://www.zerocarbonhousebirmingham....

With transformative support from Thirty Percy Foundation | http://www.thirtypercy.org

Our deep collective thanks to our host venues Moseley Road Baths, zero carbon house, Birmingham and Black Country Wildlife Trust, The Building Centre, Knowle West Media Centre + KWMC The Factory, Centre for Alternative Technology and Civic House.

Film By: What About Media | http://www.whatabout.media | info@whatabout.media