In Person ticket prices:

General Admission: £120 Now £80

SEDA member: £80 Now £65

Promo Code: SEDAmember

Student / unwaged: £40 Now £20

Promo Code: RadicalStudent

This event follows on from part 1, held in January, and continues to explore innovative, affordable and low-carbon solutions to Scotland's housing crises – both rural and urban. This event will start with a showcase of some of the beautifully-designed, prefabricated houses already available in Scotland. We know how to do it – we just need to be able to do it at scale.

Over four sessions, we will discuss how we might roll out more manufacturing hubs across Scotland, using local timber, and other ways of speeding up the building process. Experts will address issues around regulation, finance and whether retrofit might follow a similar model.

Whether you're involved in construction, housing policy, provision or campaigning, or simply interested in learning more about innovative ways of addressing the housing emergency, this is the conference for you.

"Radical Housing Conference Scotland brings together the thinkers and the doers in housing, providing an opportunity to grow the links needed to deliver more of the sustainable, affordable, home-grown housing that addresses Scotland's housing needs." - Highlands & Islands MSP and housing committee convenor Ariane Burgess 

We can't just wait for the Scottish Government to resolve this; we have to take action ourselves. Let's work together to create a more equitable, affordable and sustainable housing future in Scotland. We have one simple rule, don't come to describe the problem, only come with solutions.

Morning

9:00 Arrival, coffee and exhibition

9:15 Welcome

9:30 Session 1: INSPIRATION – a showcase of affordable prefabricated house models

• Chair – Diarmaid Lawlor – associate director, Scottish Futures Trust

• Tam – Craig White,   CEO & founder, Agile Homes

• Makar – Neil Sutherland, founder & director, MAKAR

• Nest House – Matt Stevenson, founder & managing director, Ecosystems Technologies Ltd.

10:45 Session 2: Financial INNOVATION – carbon and social value trades (CSVT)

Craig White,  CEO & founder, Agile Homes

11:15   Poetry interlude

Chris Powici will read “The House of My Dreams” a poem commission for the event.

11:30  Session 3: THE MEANS - rural construction hubs

• Chair – Diarmaid Lawlor – associate director, Scottish Futures Trust

• Neil Sutherland – founder & director, MAKAR

• John Forbes – communities co-ordinator, Communities Housing Trust

• Mark Councill – founder, Logie Timber & CleanCut Forestry

• Ronnie MacRae –  housing delivery manager, SSEN

• Isabel Conway – strategy manager, South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE)
  

12:45 Lunch and exhibition

Afternoon

13:45 Session 4: THE OBVIOUS - trustworthy retrofit centres

• Chair – Barbara Lantschner  – John Gilbert Architects Ltd 

• Matthew Clubb – mwclubb / Architectural Design

• Toby Tucker – Scottish Futures Trust

• Joanne McClelland – architect & director, EALA Impacts

• Aythan Lewes – building surveyor & director, EALA Impacts

• Moses Jenkins – senior technical officer, Historic Environment Scotland
  

15:00 Musical interlude

Beth Malcolm will sing 'See the land'.

15:30 Session 5: THE VISIONARY – regulatory futures

• Chair – Gail Halvorsen, chair, SEDA Land

• Ariane Burgess MSP – Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee

• Bea Nichols – Place Development Manager, HES

• Neil Sutherland – founder & director, MAKAR

• John Forbes – communities co-ordinator, Communities Housing Trust

• Matt Stevenson, founder & managing director, Ecosystems Technologies Ltd.
  

16:45 Concluding remarks

17:00 Close

ARTISTIC CONTRIBUTION

Both the poem and song were commissioned for this event.

Chris Powici, poet , Teaching Fellow, University of Stirling

Chris’s poetry focuses on how the natural and human worlds overlap. His poems range from the shed door to the back of beyond, from a rain-swept railway station to a graveyard in Skye. Powici edited the literary magazine Northwords Now for seven years. His poems have been published widely including in Gutter, BBC Wildlife, New Writing Scotland and Scotia Extremis.

Beth Malcolm, singer songwriter

Beth Malcolm is a songwriter, piano player and singer of stories from Perth. Beth’s music is folk-inspired, and she sings an eclectic mix of traditional Scots songs, alongside her own writing. Beth was named BBC MG ALBA Scots Singer of the Yearin 2022 and 2024.

Ariane Burgess MSP, for Highlands and Islands, Scottish Green Party.

Ariane Burgess MSP grew up in Scotland and lived for 20 years in New York City, she returned to Scotland and became involved in the independence movement, joining the Scottish Green Party in Moray. She authored “Life Design for Women: Conscious Living as a Force for Positive Change” and previously worked in sustainable community development. She is the Scottish Green Party spokesperson for Communities, Land Reform, Housing and Rural Affairs and MSP for the Highlands & Islands. As Convenor of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee she helped to steer the new National Planning Framework through Parliament and she also sits as an ordinary member of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee. In January 2023 she launched her Regenerative Scotland podcast which explores the action needed to ensure a thriving future in the face of our climate and nature emergency through a series of in-depth conversations about aspects of her parliamentary work. 

Joanne McLelland, President, EALA Impacts & Treasurer and, Edinburgh Building Retrofit & Improvement Collective

Jo is the founder of Eala CIC and an Accredited Conservation Architect with the RIBA. Jo’s twin passions of conservation and sustainability are shown in her work as well as memberships of the RIAS boards for both areas, as well as memberships of SEDA, SPAB and IHBC. Jo is the immediate past EAA President, a trustee of the RIAS, director of Circular Economy initiative Plan A, and Treasurer of the Edinburgh Building Retrofit & Improvement Collective. The Collective is a community support organisation to improve the relationship of people and their buildings in Edinburgh. She was responsible for the Edinburgh RIAS COP26 activities, including the steering group of SpACE – Space for Architecture Carbon and Environment. Jo is a tutor at the Edinburgh School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture (ESALA).

Toby Tucker, associate director, Scottish Futures Trust

Toby is a qualified Chartered Accountant and finance specialist with over 20 years' experience in corporate and project finance, as well as Banking. Toby leads SFT's work on Scottish Government’s Energy Efficient Scotland programme. He led the development and delivery of SFT’s successful Streetlighting toolkit. He is a Director of Energy for Edinburgh service company. 

Craig White, Founder and CEO, Agile Homes

Craig is CEO at Agile Property and Homes. Agile delivers low-carbon, affordable homes to those in housing need. Prior to setting up Agile, Craig founded the Chartered RIBA Architectural Practice, White Design and ModCell Straw Technology, prefabricated, renewable building systems. This combination of design and fabrication lead to one of the first construction products to make large-scale, carbon-negative building a commercial reality. 

Neil Sutherland, founder, MAKAR Ltd.

Neil is an award winning, ecologically driven architect who runs his own construction company, MAKAR Ltd., South of Inverness. MAKAR is a pioneering company that designs and builds ecological homes, offices and community buildings using off-site construction. Neil is passionate about building healthy, environmentally friendly, low energy buildings using locally grown timber. Neil has experience in timber and land management and teaches at the Scott Sutherland School of Architecture, Aberdeen.

Bea Nichols, Place development manager, Historic Environment Scotland (HES)

Bea has always worked in rural planning, first at Scottish Borders, then in Perth & Kinross followed by South Lanarkshire. She recently joined the newly formed place development scheme at HES. Her passion comes from her childhood growing up in remote Herefordshire. Locals were being bought out of the area by wealthier incomers, rural services were diminishing, and it was increasingly difficult to live and work without a car. She moved to Edinburgh before moving back to the countryside, further exacerbating the issue for the next generation of young people. Bea believes that planners are placemakers responsible for shaping communities that providing an equitable choice for future generations.

John Forbes, Community Led Housing Co-ordinator, Communities Housing Trust

With a background in Mechanical Engineering John has worked throughout the UK on Construction and Facility Management Projects. Now living on the West coast of Scotland his focus over the past decade has been to support and take forward affordable house developments throughout Rural Scotland. His role with the Communities Housing Trust includes early engagement with communities, identifying housing need, securing funding, undertaking site appraisals, land and property transactions, tenure modelling as well as construction development of new homes.

Matthew Clubb, director, mwclubb | Architectural Design

Through his firm of Architects and Retrofit Coordinators in Aberdeen, Matthew champions the adoption of whole house retrofit and community led, place-based approaches. mwclubb are the main delivery agent for the Scottish Rugby Club and Community Net Zero Fund, a project to help decarbonise rugby club buildings in communities across Scotland. Matthew chairs the North East Scotland Retrofit Hub (NESFIT), aimed at raising awareness of whole house retrofit, to alleviate fuel poverty, to build a supply chain and to transition our built environment towards healthy, resilient buildings.

Matt Stevenson, founder & managing director, Ecosystems Technologies Ltd.Founder

Matt Stevenson is a recognised industry leader in digital construction technology and low carbon building designs, having previously founded and developed early industry pioneer Carbon Dynamic. He has delivered multiple projects with partners such as Arc Digital, Napier University COCIS, CSIC and RGU through innovative projects such as the technology enabled assisted living ‘FitHome’ project and the Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology Student village.

Diarmaid Lawlor, Associate Director, Scottish Futures Trust

Diarmaid is a designer, educator, and communicator who champions creative approaches to making better places. He has over 20 years’ experience working with communities and across sectors to make well-informed decisions about place-based policy and investment challenges. In SFT, Diarmaid leads on support to the Scottish Government Place Based Investment Programme, and works with public bodies across Scotland to shape place-based strategies for services, assets and investments.

Ronnie MacRae –  Housing Delivery Manager, SSEN

Ronnie has over 40 years experience of the housing, construction and community sectors as a partner in a family construction business in Durness, promoting private sector improvements for Highland Council, before joining CHT in 2005 and was CEO from 2010 delivering a wide range of community projects and initiatives.   Now assisting SSEN to deliver its exciting Housing Strategy, he is also a Member of the Chartered Institute of Building and is a Chartered Environmentalist.

Mark Councill – founder, Logie Timber & CleanCut Forestry,

As an experienced forester, Mark is passionate about ensuring that there is an established market for high quality hardwood production in the region. With Clean Cut Forestry, his tree surgery and forestry business, Mark sources quality timber from forestry jobs that would otherwise be a waste product or cut up into firewood. Logie Timber works symbiotically with my pre-existing forestry business to complete our Full Circle approach.

Isabel Conway – strategy manager, South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE)

Isabel is strategy manager for Strategic Planning & Partnerships at SOSE, Scotland’s newest Economic and Community Development Agency. Her areas of focus include working with the South of Scotland’s Regional Economic Partnership to create more homes and more choice of homes across the South of Scotland. She lives in a small village near Selkirk in the Scottish Borders. Her previous roles include in the Scottish Government, Cabinet Office and policing

Barbara Lantschner, associate director and retrofit coordinator, John Gilbert Architects Ltd 

Barbara is a PassivHaus designer and retrofit coordinator at JGA. She holds a BA in Architecture and Urbanism and an MSc in Building Performance and Sustainability. With architectural and building performance experience she brings an understanding of the built environment and construction sector. Her work at JGA focuses on delivering deep retrofit and decarbonisation strategies across all types of buildings. With particular expertise in building performance evaluation, operational and embodied carbon strategies, renewable energy integration, and indoor air quality, she helps shape future-proof, high-performing solutions that support the transition to a low-carbon future. She is also a board member at People Power Retrofit. 

Aythan Lewes, Director, EALA Impacts CIC

Aythan is a Chartered Building Surveyor focused on how a knowledge of Building Physics and its intersection with triple bottom line sustainability can positively impact wider society. Aythan is a member of the RICS Scotland Sustainability Group and Chair of the Edinburgh Building Retrofit & Improvement Collective. Aythan was the sole Scottish representative in the group that re-drafted the RICS Whole Life Carbon Assessment Professional Statement. He specialises in building pathology, condition surveys and analysis of building performance – maintenance planning, defects diagnosis and rectification, retrofit planning, material passports and pre-demolition audits. Aythan is also an experienced project manager.

Gail Halvorsen, Halvorsen Architects & chair SEDA Land

After working for Michael Hopkins and Partners in London Gail established Halvorsen Architects in 1994. She moved to Edinburgh in 1999, where she specialises in ecological design for residential and nursery school buildings. Gail was chair of ECAN (Edinburgh Chartered Architects Network) from 2001-2 and on the board of Gorebridge Community Development Trust for 10 years, being chair from 2014-16, where she project managed the £2.5m community centre, Gorebridge Beacon. She was a Civic Trust Award assessor 1997–2011. Gail is a director of the SEDA and organised the A New Vision for Land Use in Scotland: Six Conversations in Spring 2021 after which she founded SEDA Land to look at issues facing rural Scotland in a cross-sectoral way..

Dr. Moses Jenkins, senior technical officer, Historic Environment Scotland

Moses joined HES in 2005 and is a project manager in the Technical Conservation team at the Engine Shed. He has written various guidance notes and in 2009 edited Building Scotland and in 2018 authored The Scottish Brick Industry. He gained his PhD through the study of Scottish traditional brickwork iand is a conservation accredited member of the Chartered Institute of Building. Having led many site-based technical research projects into retrofit of traditional buildings he is currently engaged in the development of policy, standards and qualifications to improve knowledge of retrofit measures for traditionally constructed buildings.