BY SARA EDMONDS
Something powerful is stirring in the world of retrofit and it’s not just insulation and air source heat pumps. Its community voices rising. Its agency being reclaimed. It’s healing, creativity, and justice meeting bricks, mortar, and policy.
The National Retrofit Hub is a partner in a project called Retrofit Reimagined: Street Demonstrators, where our role is to provide support to facilitate the development of retrofit initiatives that prioritise social and climate justice who place communities at the centre of their process. In a recent conversation, community advisor with WeCanMake, Jas Tippett, spoke candidly about what happens when we treat retrofitting not just as a technical fix, but as a space for transformation.
If you want to know more about Jas’s role, watch this short video from Refurb and Retrofit magazine:
Here’s what we learned.
THE STREET IS THE STORY
There’s so much happening on the ground — in people’s homes, lives, and neighbourhoods — up and down the country. Retrofit isn’t just a technical fix for individual homes, it’s a social process rooted in trust, relationships, and shared understanding.
Current models focus on houses as problems to be solved, rather than people to be engaged. But retrofit can feel isolating, disruptive, and overwhelming without meaningful, ongoing engagement.
Change happens when neighbours talk, when communities share knowledge, and when people see others like them taking action. Trusted relationships already exist in our streets—if we don’t build on those to enable collective, co-designed action, retrofit will remain slow, fragmented, and inaccessible. Scaling up means doing it together.
FROM EXTRACTION TO RECIPROCITY
Too often, retrofit interventions can happen to people without meaningful engagement, leaving residents feeling sidelined, disempowered, or even exploited. This extractive approach treats people as data points, not partners.
But real change comes when communities are invited into the process as co-creators. With the time, space, and legitimacy to shape decisions that affect their lives.
This project asks: What does meaningful participation look like? How do we build social contracts that respect lived experience and turn local insight into collective action? Stories shouldn’t be mined and discarded—they should be catalysts for connection, ownership, and long-term transformation.
RETROFIT AS AGENCY, NOT INTERVENTION
For generations, many working-class communities have lived in survival mode. You take what you’re given. You adapt. You endure.
Retrofit has often been another top-down “fix” — done to people, not with them. But what happens when people are invited in? When they’re told, “Here are your options. What do you want?” That’s when true transformation begins.
It’s not just about energy bills or damp walls, it’s about power. About someone turning to you and saying: You take the wheel now.
CHANGE IS SCARY – FOR EVERYONE
And yet, change is hard. Communities that have been let down over and over again often fear that change will bring more harm. And institutions? They fear that change will cost them control, jobs, and certainty.
That’s where trusted intermediaries come in, people who can hold space between systems and communities. But it’s exhausting work. These bridge-builders need support too. They need care, rest, and support to keep holding complexity with grace and resolve.
HEALTH AS A STARTING POINT
Retrofit conversations are increasingly pivoting toward health, and rightly so. Cold homes, poor air quality, and mould are making people sick. But legal limits don’t always reflect lived reality.
Enter: Community Health Impact Assessments. These tools help surface what health means in context, not just in data sets. What does it feel like to live in your body, in your home, in your environment? What could be different?
This kind of inquiry doesn’t just improve outcomes. It transforms the way we even think about outcomes in the first place.
CREATIVITY IS RESISTANCE
One of the most striking reflections from this conversation? That creative thinking — imagination — is a threat to the status quo. That’s why it often gets cut first in deprived areas.
But creativity is exactly what we need. Because if you can imagine a different future, you can start to move toward it. And if communities are given tools to dream, build, and shape — that’s not just art. That’s revolution.
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
After some major setbacks, where institutional decisions hampered meaningful community progress, the team is regrouping. There’s a new plan forming. One that speaks the language of systems but is rooted in the lived wisdom of the street.
The next phase will include mapping, listening, and prototyping. The aim? To co-create actions that work under the same conditions — not because someone handed them down, but because they grew up from within.
WE HAVE A CHOICE NOW
Maybe the most radical idea of all is this: We have a choice now.
We don’t have to accept substandard solutions. We don’t have to accept the way things have always been. We don’t have to wait for permission to engage. We can reimagine what health, home, and community mean — and then go build that together.
And when one person makes that choice it’s not just for themselves. It ripples. It inspires. It clears a path for others to follow.
“Once you’re shown that something else is possible, it changes everything.”
And this? This is just the start.
WANT TO GET INVOLVED?
We’re looking for individuals and organisations to support the technical clinics and contribute to this growing movement.
As an Individual: Become a Co-Creator
Join our flexible, volunteer-based Co-Creator Programme. This is an opportunity to contribute time and skills in areas like research, content creation, marketing, or design. Co-Creators receive support and briefings from the NRH team, gain hands-on experience, and are publicly credited for their contributions (including a digital badge to share your involvement).
It’s an ideal way to grow professionally, develop networks, and make a tangible impact on the retrofit transition. Register your interest here.
As an Organisation: Join the Community of Industry
Get in touch if your organisation would be interested in supporting this Community of Industry to meet your social value goals. We can explore partnerships and collaborations to suit the scale of support appropriate to each organisation. Register your interest here.
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