Introducing "A Building for Your Community": A new podcast exploring community-led development
A new podcast created and hosted by Becca Thomas exploring how we build places that truly serve the people that live there
How do we build spaces that truly serve the people who use them?
That question sits at the heart of A Building for Your Community, a new podcast created and hosted by Becca Thomas, director of place & architect here at Civic.
Through conversations with artists, social enterprises, architects and community groups, the series explores what happens when communities lead the process of shaping the spaces and places they live, work and gather in.
Produced by Becca Thomas and Halina Rifai, with editing by Halina Rifai and research and support from Marc Cairns, Luke Neve and Mathilde Piel.
Building with, not for
Each episode of A Building for Your Community delves into the challenges and opportunities of community-led development - where design and ownership are shared, and the process is as important as the outcome. From playful approaches to serious topics, to the “happy naivety” that allows collaboration to flourish, the series shares lessons from people redefining what it means to create buildings with communities, not just for them.
Below is a glimpse of the first four episodes:
Episode 1 - Community-Led Housing with Mellis Haward
What happens when the people who'll actually live in homes get to design them from scratch? Mellis Haward from Archio Architects shares how winning projects through public votes, running four-day design workshops with just a site plan, and genuinely listening to what people aren't saying can fundamentally change how we approach housing design. From Community Land Trust projects in Lewisham to co-housing schemes in Norwich, this conversation explores the "happy naivety" required to let communities truly lead.
Episode 2 - Social Enterprise: When Mission Meets Money with Cristina Cerulli
When Studio Polpo set up as a social enterprise in the early 2010s, they had to explain to the RIBA what that even meant. Now they're initiating Community Land Trust projects and understanding development finance better than most developers. Cristina Cerulli discusses what it means to run an architecture practice legally required to benefit society rather than shareholders, why doing non-commercial work means being even more aware of money, and how playfulness creates sideways engagement in serious conversations about housing and community.
Episode 3 - Visibility as Architecture: Creating Space for Underrepresented Groups with Array Collective
In Belfast, where geography itself is political, Array Collective makes work that's deliberately loud and visible. Jane Butler and Thomas Wells discuss creating safe space through presence rather than walls, making work for communities they're part of rather than parachuting in with solutions, and how humour and silliness can disarm audiences enough to start conversations about abortion rights and marriage equality. This is about what happens when visibility itself becomes the architecture
Episode 4 - Community-Led Development: The Client Perspective
When community groups take on derelict buildings, they become project managers, fundraisers, negotiators, and somehow - often without training - responsible for capital programmes worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Margaret Gibb from Kinning Park Complex in Glasgow, and Samuel Sparrow and David Smith from Old School Thornhill in Dumfries and Galloway share the reality of leading community-led development projects. From discovering that all support is front-loaded to wrestling with whether spaces can be "too nice" for communities, this conversation reveals what happens after you get the keys. Spoiler: opening the building is just the beginning.
