Legacy Projects

Since 2020, Owned by Oxford has been working hard to establish itself, build relationships and partnerships and deliver projects around Oxford. Here are some of the things we have worked in.

Find out more about our current project here

Barton Community Retrofit Cooperative

A proposal to set up a Barton Retrofit Cooperative business to:

• Provide energy saving services for local residents
• Provide retrofit services
• Train and upskill local people

Barton Context

• New housing developments on edge of estate promising high standards of efficiency and renewable energy
• Poor housing stock – especially 1950s prefabs
• Local concerns about rising energy prices

What we achieved

• We started to recruit local builders interested in “learning through doing”
• We had a local retrofit expert to lead the team.
• The community engagement aspect as well as linking into broader conversations about retrofitting has been a real strength of the project thus far. For example, the project coordinator was able to reach out to residents, especially the elderly, who are affected by the cost of living crisis.
• Seed-funding was been secured from the Owned by Oxford project and Transition Together
• The aim was to start small and build one “community retrofit team”, then expand and create new teams, and then replicate the model in other communities

Challenges

The two biggest challenges were finding a house that could serve as a place to
experiment with retrofitting techniques and identifying training opportunities for potential
workers interested in joining.

We continue to engage with the Barton Community through our community advocates and look forward to building on and supporting this work further.

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A community-owned hub for Blackbird Leys

Anyone who knows Blackbird Leys will tell you that the community is buzzing with energy and ideas. Look beyond the usual negative stories and you’ll find hundreds of examples of how residents reach out to support each other and co-create local solutions for local issues. 

But the spaces and places for local citizens to come together to organise, design and deliver in Blackbird Leys are few and far between. This is a real problem and an obstacle to collaboration and sustainability for communities that are already facing significant inequalities.

Alongside this, there has been a stop and start process around plans to redevelop the City Council-run Blackbird Leys Community Centre. Many groups have moved out and right now there is a lot of underused space.

In this context, Owned by Oxford has been collaborating with partners in Blackbird Leys to explore how community enterprises can increase their access to affordable workspaces.

We are continuing to work in Blackbird Leys especially around bringing together local organisers to bring spaces in community ownership.

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