We’re excited to announce that we’ve successfully completed stage one of our cohousing journey: bringing together a group of people interested in, or enthusiastic about cohousing!
Starting from zero
Cohousing is a totally fresh approach for Southway and we are collaborating with Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and GM Community Led Homes on this journey as part of a funded research project.
Our initial work was to find out if people in our communities would be interested in cohousing. To achieve this, we launched our cohousing communications campaign in March, using various channels: social media, website, email, printed leaflets and in-person drop-in sessions. The challenge for us was that the appetite for cohousing was unknown.
The aim of this campaign was to ask Southway tenants aged 50+ ‘are you interested in cohousing?' and, if so, 'would you be interested in working with us to explore the potential for cohousing in South Manchester?’ .
A positive response
To our relief, the response was positive! We started by having some interesting conversations with tenants about cohousing and we were encouraged to find that some of the people we talked with already had a good understanding of cohousing and its benefits.
Cohousing, food and music
On 18 April, we successfully brought stage one to a close by having our first cohousing workshop, held at Westcroft Community Centre. The workshop was, despite the rain, well attended by 8 tenants with 3 apologies. Everyone shared their thoughts about cohousing on ‘what they like’, ‘what they don’t like’ and ‘what they are unsure of’ using some cohousing examples. We also enjoyed some tasty food cooked by Southway Housing and Manchester Metropolitan University staff. We even made a Spotify playlist and enjoyed the music whilst we sat down to eat and get to know each other!
Most importantly we now have 10 people with whom we can move forward to the next stage – forming a cohousing steering group!
Next Steps
We will move onto stage two of this project to explore cohousing together and create our vision which will involve more workshops, hopefully a site visit to a cohousing scheme and probably some more tasty food!
It is not too late to get involved in cohousing journey! If you are Southway tenant aged 50+ and interested, please contact Paul Greenwood p.greenwood@southwayhousing.co.uk / 07860 758 361
To find out more about cohousing please visit this page on our website here.