Birmingham Friends of the Earth is the only local FOE group to own our own building, and at the start of April we celebrated our 40th birthday by launching an ambitious plan to transform the building for the next 40 years, asking members of the public to make an investment in community shares of between £250 and £10,000 to raise the funds we need to regenerate the building.
Over the past 40 years the Warehouse has been the base for all of our activity – housing everything from practical recycling and home insulation projects to the current mix of meeting and office space and green and community businesses.
I am immensely proud of everything we’ve achieved over the past 40 years, but we know that we can do so much more. To stay relevant over the past 40 years we’ve constantly had to evolve and react to a changing world. We know that now we need to change to deal with the challenges of the next 40 years.
We plan to transform the building into a practical example of energy-efficient eco-renovation in action, with full disabled accessibility and the space that our social enterprise and charity tenants need to grow. We hope to demonstrate a community-led form of regeneration which works with existing buildings and local people rather than tearing them down. That’s been our dream for a long time and we’ve finally got an opportunity to make it come true. But we can’t do it on our own.
If you believe in what we do, if you believe in taking local action to fight global injustice, if you believe that together we not only can create a better world but that we must – take this leap with us. Join us and be part of our transformational change.
Invest here: http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/unlocking-the-warehouse
