Melissa Mean
Community builder
Director of We Can Make at Knowle West Media Center, co-convener of the Redcliff Forum
“We can only build better if we build with communities.”
Empowering urbanist and public participation champion, Melissa Mean worked on a range of community-centred development projects, from creating the UK’s largest urban beach on a disused carpark in Bristol to setting up a pop-up furniture factory for community manufacturing.
She is Director of We Can Make, a citizen-led housing programme and part of Knowle West Media Centre in Bristol. We Can Make unlocks micro-sites for affordable homes, using digital fabrication tech to localise production and build community wealth.
In her spare time, Melissa is co-convener of the Redcliffe Forum, a neighbourhood group working to reclaim a dual carriage-way for homes, nature and public space. She also sits on the No Place Left Behind Commission which is examining how policy and practice can enable regenerative development in communities.