Speakers Expo 2021 2

Christine has been chair of Marshfield Community Land Trust since it started in 2016. Previously she worked in Education for many years at Bath Spa University with a particular interest in education and inequalities. MCLT’s first project aimed to address the shortage of affordable housing in the village. Over the 52 years Christine has lived in Marshfield she has seen how housing for people with local connections has become more and more unaffordable so has been pleased to be part of MCLT and trying to make changes that benefit all members of our community.

United Communities is a community-based housing association, managing over 1,800 homes in Bristol and surrounding areas. Sally oversees its affordable housing programme. A surveyor by profession, she has worked in the construction industry for over 30 years. Sally is passionate about building high-quality homes both in terms of the materials used and with the future occupants firmly in mind. This has led her to explore new methods of construction, particularly modular, for its potential to deliver a high-quality, sustainable, and rapid solution to housing delivery.

Liz is an internationally recognised leader in sustainable wellbeing with over 20 years of experience in connecting, challenging and supporting change-makers. She has been a key part of the development of all Centre for Thriving Place’s wellbeing measurement tools and approaches. She is a globally in-demand speaker and advisor on community wellbeing and place-based approaches to measuring, understanding and improving wellbeing in all sectors.

Angelique Retief works in research and policy at Black South West Network (BSWN) alongside her PhD at the University of Bristol. Her PhD research looks to understand the role of social enterprise in the provision of housing in townships in Cape Town. In her role at BSWN, Angelique has worked on a variety of research projects, the latest being an analysis of the housing needs and aspirations of BAME communities in Bristol.

Melissa works across urbanism, the arts, and public participation. Her work has ranged from creating the UK’s largest urban beach on a disused carpark in Bristol, to setting up a pop-up furniture factory for community manufacturing.

She is Director of the We Can Make, a community-led housing programme which is part of Knowle West Media Centre in Bristol. We Can Make unlocks micro-sites for affordable homes, using digital fabrication tech to localise production and build community wealth.

In her spare time, Melissa is co-convener of the Redcliffe Forum, a neighbourhood group working to reclaim a dual carriage-way for homes, nature and community space. She also sits on the No Place Left Behind Commission which is examining how policy and practice can enable regenerative development with communities.

Bristol Student Housing Co-op is a student-led organisation working towards providing Bristol’s student population with non-exploitative housing solutions. Julian, alongside other founding members of the co-op, has worked with stakeholders at the University of Bristol and in the cooperative sector to find a viable property in which a self-owning, and hopefully self-sustaining, student community can blossom. Bristol Student Housing Co-op hope to convert, and move into, a former halls of residence in the short-to-medium term.

Paul works full time for Locality, as Development Manager (South West), supporting ambitious and enterprising community-led organisations to work together to ensure their neighbourhoods thrive. He joined the United Communities HA Board in September 2015. He has over two decades of in depth experience in the arena of economic and community development and across a range of media platforms.

Sam Goss is the Founding Director of Bristol based Barefoot Architects. The practice seeks to 'design better futures together' by empowering communities and individuals to co-design affordable, sustainable homes for themselves. Within the practice, Sam has led on a range of Community Led Housing projects across the Southwest, from Falmouth, Devon, Dorset, the Isle of Wight and their home city of Bristol.