Residents Advisory Board Session 1

On Wednesday 19 January we held our first workshop with Be First’s brand-new Residents Advisory Board (RAB) made up of local Barking and Dagenham residents. Along with Alistair Bance, Stephanie Edwards and James Stewart from Urban Symbiotics, Amandeep Singh Kalra, Betty Owoo, Sadia Ur- Rehman and Kate Hogarth from Be First led an energetic online session exploring how best we can design the homes, spaces and places of the future. This first workshop focused on what home means to residents, and how they live in their homes as a result.

The RAB is made up of a diverse group of residents of different ages from a wide range of backgrounds, representing the multicultural nature of Barking and Dagenham’s population. To ensure that each of the 17 wards has representation, members have been selected from across the borough. Each member brings a unique set of experiences, and individual enthusiasm and passion for change, and will help Be First set new standards for high quality, affordable housing.

In this initial online session, we all got to know each other a little better, and the RAB was introduced to some of Be First’s portfolio of projects and their aim of building healthy and sustainable neighbourhoods where people thrive. We then split into breakout rooms to dive into the detail of how members of the RAB live. We discussed activities such as home working, entertaining, and sleeping – and started to think about what kind of spaces we would like to do those activities in.

Make sure to check back in with this website to see how the workshops progress and to follow our progress as we work with the RAB to co-create a Residents’ Charter!