Building Better: Community of Practice 101 Getting Started for New and Prospective Members

This blog was adapted from our introductory webinar – watch the presentation here.

Perhaps you’ve read about the Building Better: Community of Practice, you like the vision, you share our passion to see an increase in the delivery of social and affordable homes – but you’re wondering how it will work in practice? In this blog, we share the core elements of communities of practice and why they’re effective, what the Building Better: Community of Practice will do, and what it means to be a member.

Core Features: Domain, Community, and Practice

The concept of a Community of Practice (CoP) isn't new. It originated from academic research in the early 1990s by Jean Lave, an anthropologist, and Etienne Wenger, an educational psychologist. They discovered that the most effective learning occurs within social groups that share a common passion or profession and work together on shared problems. As a result of their work, CoPs have been adopted across various industries, including healthcare and technology, as a model for fostering innovation and collaboration.Lave and Wenger's work identified three core elements that distinguish a CoP from other social networks:

Domain: A shared commitment to a particular area of interest or specialisation, forming the backbone of the learning focus.

Community: CoPs thrive on the collective effort of its members to drive system change. It leverages social collaboration as a key innovation process, transcending mere technological advancements.

Practice: CoPs are grounded in shared experiences and challenges within a specific domain. Practitioners contribute their insights and expertise, fostering an environment of mutual learning and growth.

The Domain and Vision of the Building Better: Community of Practice

The BB: CoP's chosen domain centers on driving systemic change in the UK housing sector by leveraging innovation to increase the supply of social and affordable, energy-efficient homes.

Creating a Collaborative Space

Membership of the BB: CoP is free and open to professionals across the social and affordable housing ecosystem. However, members will choose how actively engaged they would like to be. The success of the Community of Practice will rest on the active participation and engagement of its members.

In 2026, we will be identifying themes with our Advisory Board and members for the community to focus on. Themes matter because we are not interested in creating more spaces purely for passive presentations. We’re interested in identifying the barriers to progress, gathering experts to work through them and shaping the activities of the community around outcomes. Events are often just the first step – it’s what happens next that matters.

Our upcoming Demountable and/or Meanwhile Use Temporary Accommodation panel event is a good example of this. We know that local authorities across the UK are finding themselves on a burning platform created by the Temporary Accommodation emergency, including over 160,000 children now living in long-term managed homelessness. While the long-term solution is to build more affordable and social rent homes, we also need innovative strategies to alleviate the TA pressure in the short-term.

We’ve identified that Bristol City Council and the London Borough of Havering have recently pioneered innovative housing delivery models that could create a significant opportunity in this regard. The panel event will therefore explore these with other experts across the sector, with the goal of creating a ‘toolkit’ to help share the learnings of these pathfinder projects more widely, so that other local authorities can build this collective wisdom into the next iterations.

We’re interested in incubating progress, step by step, together.

What to Expect as a Member

As part of the BB: CoP, members will gain access to:

Events: BB: CoP hosts a variety of events, from webinars to site visits, aimed at facilitating meaningful interaction. The themes will guide these events, ensuring they contribute to ongoing dialogues and tangible progress.

Knowledge Assets: Members can share solutions, research, and insights through the platform, with options to showcase materials publicly or within the members' area. They may also be part of co-creating these.

Member Profiles: The online members' area allows members to connect, engage in discussions, and contribute to the community's growth through a message board feature.

How to Join

Joining the BB: CoP is simple and free. Prospective members need to complete a membership questionnaire to ensure a mutual understanding of what they can offer and expect from the community. They can then register and create a profile on the website's members' area, customizing their privacy settings accordingly.

We are looking forward to continuing to grow this community in 2026 – do come and join us!