Birmingham is currently tackling a severe fuel poverty crisis, with 23.2% of local households struggling to maintain comfortable home temperatures. This burden falls disproportionately on low-income families and newly arrived communities. Navigating an unfamiliar climate and different housing stock, they often lack the language or local connections to ask for help.

To bridge this gap, Climate Transition 2100 CIC (CT2100) launched the "Resilient Homes, Resilient Neighbours @ Birmingham" programme. Throughout June, our team focused on building trusted local relationships and creating supportive spaces where neighbours could learn from one another.

Building the Foundation: Community Outreach

On Saturday, 13 June, we began our public outreach by joining the "Learn Together: Hongkongers' Diverse Learning Day 2026" (和你學港人多元學習日2026), an annual multi-activity learning day organised by the West Midland Hong Kongers CIC. We followed this with another outreach day on Saturday, 27 June, at the Women Chainmakers’ Festival.

Through these platforms, we engaged directly with dozens of newly arrived families and local residents. This informal setting allowed us to listen deeply to their needs, welcome new volunteer sign-ups, and invite residents to our upcoming interactive workshops.

Co-Learning and Co-Creating: Summer Energy Saving & Cooling Workshop

The heart of our June effort was the Summer Energy Saving & Cooling Workshop (夏季。慳電降溫學堂). The session utilised a "Talanoa" dialogue model, a conversational framework where everyone’s lived experience is valued equally.

Rather than just handing out standard advice leaflets, the workshop treated new arrivals as active partners who bring their own valuable cultural perspectives to the UK:  

• Blending Cultural Knowledge: Growing up in subtropical climates, many Hong Kongers brought practical, intuitive cooling habits to the table. These included dehumidifying tricks, strategic electric fan placement for more efficient cross-ventilation, and managing household heat sources.

• Bridging Technical Gaps: While participants shared these lifestyle practices, our Domestic Energy Assessor, Johnson Chiu, provided the necessary UK technical context. He walked the group through how to read British Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), how to correctly program unfamiliar domestic boilers, and how to improve indoor ventilation.

• Breaking the Language Barrier for a Just Transition: Mainstream energy advice in the UK is rarely accessible in minority languages, which severely slows down how quickly new arrivals can adapt. By conducting this workshop in the participants' native language, we completely broke down that communication barrier. This inclusive environment allowed residents to absorb technical concepts quickly, causing a jump in their self-rated confidence in handling summer heat.

By the end of the session, participants had measurably more confidence. Self-rated understanding of indoor cooling nearly doubled, alongside significant gains in boiler know-how, EPC literacy, and general energy-saving awareness.

Just as importantly, participants left with more than just tips. A WhatsApp mutual-support group was formed on the day, giving the group a permanent place to continue sharing solutions, crowdsourcing ideas, troubleshooting, and keeping each other safe year-round. That is the outcome we care about most: not a one-off event, but a community equipped to keep helping itself.

Understanding the Interconnected Lived Experience

Our open conversations highlighted that high energy costs are deeply tied to a family's overall mental wellbeing:

• Financial and Mental Strain: Many participants expressed high levels of stress regarding unpredictable energy tariffs, admitting they frequently tolerate uncomfortable or unsafe indoor temperatures simply to avoid bills they cannot afford.

• Everyday Obstacles: Some participants were unable to practice natural cross-ventilation during heatwaves was not driven solely by primary technical constraints, such as single-aspect or windowless rooms. Secondary factors, such as fear of UK insects and spiders entering through open windows, also discourage window use. 

• Looking Ahead to Winter: Even during a hot summer, winter anxieties were front and center. Participants expressed clear worries about how they will handle upcoming British winter issues like drafts, condensation, and aggressive mould.

What’s Next? 

In July, the programme turns to a practical follow-up: building DIY cooling solutions with participants. The aim is to help households stay comfortable through the heatwave season without defaulting to energy-hungry air conditioning, which drives up bills and adds to the very emissions the programme is trying to help residents adapt to. It is a direct, hands-on continuation of the ideas raised in June, low-cost, low-carbon, and rooted in what the community itself has already been trying at home.

This project is generously funded by the National Lottery Community Fund (Awards for All England). We are incredibly grateful for their support in offering us this opportunity, which demonstrates that a sustainable transition can be grounded in community, dignity, and shared local wisdom.