About this group
The Project
Future Fit Bristol is a collaborative and inspirational project based in Knowle West in Bristol that aims to engage and impact the local community, addressing fuel poverty, unemployment and digital illiteracy. Ultimately our objective is to ‘prepare homes and people for our green and digital future’ by addressing:
- Retrofitting to save energy
We will assess local homes and make material changes to the buildings, improving their energy efficiency, reducing fuel poverty and decreasing reliance on fossil fuels. This will include insulating walls, lofts and floors, upgrading existing heating systems, draft proofing and installing other energy efficiency measures and microrenewables (if appropriate).
- Training and employment
We will support local builders to develop skills in renewable and green construction. We will also offer traineeships, and potentially apprenticeships to long-term workless people to facilitate them becoming more employable in the construction industry.
- Behavioural change
We will strengthen the local community through digital inclusion, and engagement of householders, builders and trainees in environmental issues and the retrofitting process.
Our organisation
Future Fit Bristol is made up of three local community based organisations (The Tree of Life, Knowle West Media Centre and re:work) that have been working on the Knowle West estate in South Bristol for up to 20 years. Recently strong links have been established by these partner organisations, with the belief that working in partnership will produce significantly more impactful results than working in isolation. Each partner has extensive experience in their area of focus, and this partnership allows each to continue concentrating on their individual field, whilst working together in a way that is strengthened by the diversity of each partner’s expertise.
(See http://www.kwmc.org.uk, http://www.rework.ltd.org.uk for more information)
The need for Knowle West
Fuel poverty (as defined by spending more than 10% of income on fuel bills) is a significant issue in Knowle West. Despite some upgrades having being made, houses on the estate are significantly below modern energy efficiency construction standards, making them expensive to heat and run. A majority of Super Output Areas in Knowle West rank amongst the most deprived 10% in the country, with all wards being in the worst 10% for the skills and training index.
This overall picture of deprivation translates to concentrated levels of widespread poverty, making this estate an appropriate area for beneficial effects to be seen from both energy use reduction measures and employment opportunities, and to build momentum for the program to grow. This is also an area that will benefit most significantly from its citizens being empowered to make decisions and create change at a local level. There has been huge investment via national government regeneration schemes, but in order for long term change there needs to be a substantial shift to local ownership of both the issues and the solutions, and Future Fit Bristol addresses this imperative.
The Pilot
This project has the potential to extend to all 2,000 houses on the estate, providing a long lasting and significant legacy in the area. We will be running a small scale pilot project to prove that the full scale project is significant, achievable, relevant and time-effective. The pilot will:
- Demonstrate how two typical houses on the estate can be transformed and made substantially more energy efficient, establishing standards for retrofitting the local housing stock.
- Engage and involve community members with retrofitting and the wider issues of climate change.
- Inspire trades people to get them involved in green building practices.
- Allow for evaluation of data, as pre and post assessments will be carried out and the energy savings made will be monitored.
- Educate and support local people, as we will be working directly with the people who live in the houses offering support in environmental education and energy efficiency advice.
- Provide training opportunities for five people through our traineeship (a six week placement of two days a week, including digital literacy, environmental education, personal and social development and work placements on the retrofit sites).
- Make data understandable and engaging using interactive, non-text based digital tools and platforms to support low carbon living.
- Have an approach to sharing and disseminating our learning and experience from this project, to benefit as many other people and projects as possible, using digital tools to support this.
- Inspire other projects in deprived neighbourhoods, giving them the ability and knowledge to reduce energy consumption in their communities.
The project will then scale up over the next 8 years to retrofit all 2000 privately owned houses on the estate.
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