Housing Futures is a programme which will run for the next 18 months. The desired outcome of the programme is to develop a service, product or new approach that will help solve a challenge facing us in the sector.
The work is being run in collaboration with the National Housing Federation, Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, and the Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations.
Working with innovation experts ?Whatif!, we want every housing association in Wales to benefit from working together on a sector-wide scale to tackle our shared challenges.
The work will run in the following stages:
- Find out our big sector challenge: staff and tenants from housing associations across Wales have been invited to share what they believe their main challenges and barriers are.
- The challenges will be reviewed by a Welsh Steering Group who will then decide what we need to focus on.
- Gathering insights: Once we have identified what the main challenge is, people from housing associations across Wales will be trained to gather insights on the issue, and feed back.
- Greenhouse: Five people who work for housing associations in Wales will then be seconded into a 16 week programme to try and find a solution to the issue.
- Developing the idea: Once the idea has been created, the team will then work with a support network to decide whether and how to take forward the idea.
This is the biggest collaborative exercise ever undertaken by our sector, and we’ll also benefit from working with teams from across England, Scotland and Ireland.
We have hit the ground running in 2020 with this programme and we need YOU!
Look back on the Challenge Identification workshops
The stories behind Housing Futures
As the ageing population grows, it’s increasingly important to create services that meet the needs of people. Laura Wood was PR and Communications Lead at North Star Housing Group when she joined forces with colleagues from across the sector in England to form Invisible Creations. She tells us how The National Housing Federation’s ‘Creating our Future’ programme (the first stage of the Federation’s futures’ programme) encouraged the collaborative work that led to Invisible Creations, of which she is now Marketing Director.
November
/
December
Working Group:
- Refining the challenge
- Set Challenge specification
January
2021
Working Group:
Challenge launched to the public for solutions.
February
Working Group/steering group:
Shortlist and qualification - which ideas will we bring forward?
February
/
March
Working Group/Steering group:
Progression pathway - steps to test ideas.
Alcemi Case Studies
Influencing for a better future
The importance of a good home has been exposed on a grand and very public scale during the lockdown period. Clairssa Corbisiero looks at how the sector vision of a Wales where good housing is a basic right for all has driven our new programme of work, placing housing at the centre of post Covid recovery in Wales.
Good innovation is about falling in love with the problem
In 2018, Katie Teasdale took part in the National Housing Federation’s innovation programme – then called Creating Our Future. After a three-day ‘hackathon’ event, learning how to solve problems and generate ideas, she was selected to join a 16 week secondment, where 25 people from across the housing sector were tasked with creating and developing ideas to change the world. Katie, Head of Member Services at the National Housing Federation, tells us what happened next…
Housing Futures: A massive opportunity for the sector
Over the next 18 months housing associations across Wales will be collaborating on an unprecedented scale, coming together with colleagues in England & Scotland to tackle housing’s biggest challenges. Edwina O’Hart is the Futures lead at Community Housing Cymru. She tells us what to expect: