Search

Bristol City Council focuses on the questions: How can crowdfunding as an investment activity be made use of to collectively raise the capital to install energy efficiency measures within community buildings within an urban area? Community centres have always been hubs for communities in the UK. Cuts from local authorities mean that many services once coordinated by the council are now being taken on by the local community. Community occupied buildings are often the last to receive the necessary energy efficiency adaptations and this is nearly always down to a lack of finance. The energy efficiency of these buildings is key to the level of comfort. Moreover, if energy bills can be reduced, there is ultimately more revenue available for the community to undertake their core activities. Crowdfunding not only has the benefit of being able to raise capital in a collective way, but it also is a method that attracts attention by its very nature and requires the residents of Bristol to come together to raise the funds required.

This guidebook is intended to inspire city representatives, local authorities, citizens and NGOs, local entrepreneurs and academics interested in new ways of engaging in urban sustainable transitions. Its practice based and accessible format should prepare city representatives to set up and conduct their own City Labs, even if they have no previous experience with this form of governance innovation.

This report has been written to document all the stages that the City of Antwerp’s City Lab has been through; from the scoping and mapping phase to collect all existing SIE projects, to the selection of the experiments and supporting the lead stakeholders of these experiments to the roll out and lessons learned.