The Regenerative Community Building project is a collaboration between OCLT and researchers from Oxford’s two universities under the Science Together programme. 

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The project’s main aim is to explore how we can build affordable housing in Oxfordshire in a way that is both socially and environmentally regenerative.

 

In other words, we’re answering the question:​ how can we ensure that the way in which we create affordable housing actually enriches and replenishes nature and our social fabric, rather than simply trying to minimise further harm?

 

What we're doing

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We’re doing this by testing a participatory approach to constructing and retrofitting housing using locally-sourced natural materials (read more on why using these materials is important here).

 

Practically, this means bringing a broad range of people together from across our communities to learn to build using materials such as straw, clay, timber, and hemp. The first phase of the project, held in summer 2025, will be a series of practical participatory building skills workshops focusing on the use of natural materials such as clay, straw, and reed. You can find out more about these and register your interest in participating here.

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Project outcomes

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We expect this approach to have significant social and environmental benefits, for example:

 

Social benefits:

• increasing participants’ sense of agency and self-direction

• improving social cohesion and solidarity across the local community

• enhancing social mobility through skills acquisition

• enriching urban dwellers’ understanding of the rural economy, and vice versa

 

Environmental benefits:

• raising awareness of the construction industry’s impact on the environment

• modelling land uses that have the potential to increase biodiversity and soil health

• encouraging construction that minimises the use of materials that are damaging to the planet because of their high embodied carbon or other ecological footprint

 

But there are important potential economic benefits too. As part of the project, we’re identifying a network of producers, processors, suppliers, construction professionals, and end users in Oxfordshire who could form the basis for a future local regenerative construction economy – one that could provide livelihoods and attract investment in both rural and urban areas. And through our practical workshops, we will help to fill the local green construction skills gap, preparing amateurs and professionals alike to participate in the new net-zero economy – currently the fastest-growing area of economic activity in the UK:

 

Economic benefits:

• catalyses a local regenerative construction economy

• helps fill the local green construction skills gap

 

Research

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Researchers from Oxford’s universities will produce insights that allow us to refine and build momentum behind our approach, evaluating our success and guiding future builds. We hope to feed the knowledge and experience we gain through the project back into OCLT’s own housing projects, as well as to influence the way housing is constructed across Oxfordshire and beyond.

 

For more detail about why working with the kind of natural, “biobased” materials mentioned above can help Community Land Trusts like OCLT fulfil their core mission while tackling ecological breakdown, click here.

 

Project team

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• Dr Josh Booth, OCLT

• Andreea Dabija, Oxford University, Department of Engineering Science

• Deborah Glass-Woodin, OCLT

• Ayla Karaman, Oxford University, Bodleian Libraries

• Guido Meloni, OCLT

• Dr Mina Samangooei, Oxford Brookes University, School of Architecture

• Dr Jamie Sims, Oxford Brookes University, School of Sport, Nutrition, and Allied Health Professions