Redefining retrofit at scale with community-led retrofit
In this article, Rob Morrison, Impact Manager BE-ST shares the vision behind the Retrofit Scotland project, which will be crucial to delivering a community-led retrofit approach across the country.
Many of the greatest transformations don’t start with massive interventions but with well-placed, strategic actions.
In Small Is Beautiful, E.F. Schumacher argues that small-scale efforts, when supported correctly, can reshape entire systems. Donella Meadows (Thinking In Systems) takes this further, showing how targeted leverage points – the right interventions at the right time – can drive exponential change.
Retrofit is not a linear or centralised process. It is distributed and holistic and it is, in many ways, the biggest infrastructure project of our generation. We already have the hardware: the materials, the techniques, the technology, but what we need is a new operating system.
The infrastructure to maximise impact
With the right infrastructure, small-scale, community-led efforts can scale into something far greater, without losing their local impact. But this isn’t a binary choice between big and small. Like all innovations and movements, transformation happens in parallel across different scales, sectors, and contexts.
The challenge is not whether small-scale retrofit can scale, but rather how we maximise the leverage of our efforts to ensure it does.
What does strategic leverage look like in retrofit?
Infrastructure for action
Learning from social movements we are seeing how small-scale initiatives can create out-sized impact with limited resources - I believe the National Retrofit Hub (NRH) is an example of this.
Technology
New tools are making retrofit more efficient, accessible, and scalable. Digital twins, faster energy modelling for building performance analysis can amplify and accelerate local efforts with limited resources.
Communication & Collaboration
We are seeing new partnerships emerge across the country that link business, academia, local government, and community groups.
A tangible example of this is the recently launched Centre for Net Zero High-Density Buildings, led by the University of Edinburgh, with BE-ST as a core partner. This initiative provides a pathway from small-scale pilots to large-scale implementation, with Retrofit Scotland playing a key role in knowledge-sharing and best practice.
Parallel Efforts
We don’t have time to wait for top-down directives. Instead, we can create complementary structures—empowering local groups to shape the retrofit agenda from the ground up.
This thinking aligns directly with the Retrofit Reimagined festival in 2023, where we hosted the Glasgow edition at Civic House. The key question: What if the climate transition and retrofit of our homes and streets were designed, owned, and governed by the people who live there?
The opportunity lies in galvanising community involvement from the inception of projects. Not as an afterthought, but as the driving force behind decision-making.
Learning from case studies: Agile City to Retrofit Scotland
I saw this potential firsthand at Agile City, a social enterprise creating workspace for social and green enterprise to thrive. We developed a prototype for retrofitting post-industrial spaces to become energy-positive. But this wasn’t just about decarbonisation, it was about preserving built heritage and recognising that embodied carbon is only one part of the story.
Glasgow has a history of demolishing its architectural legacy, leading to social, economic, and environmental decline. Retrofitting offers an alternative: one that revitalises communities while reducing emissions.
Building on this, I joined BE-ST, exploring how this experience could inform a national approach. This led to my work with Retrofit Scotland, where we are developing the physical and digital infrastructure needed to support a thriving, community-led retrofit sector.
From local to national impact
Through delivering training, convening communities through co-design and feedback, shared retrofit facilities, and knowledge sharing for best practice, Retrofit Scotland’s vision is to enable and empower the agents of retrofit action.
This means:
Place-based solutions that respect local context, rather than top-down mandates.
Partnership-driven collaboration, connecting communities, policymakers, and industry.
Scalable impact, where grassroots initiatives feed into a national framework for retrofit.
BE-ST launched the National Retrofit Centre in 2024, but one hub isn’t enough. We need a distributed network. Our ‘hub and spoke’ model aims to establish community-run retrofit facilities across Scotland. True to the spirit of retrofit, we aren’t building from scratch, we are reimagining and repurposing existing spaces. This is starting with Civic House in Glasgow, and we are actively seeking more spaces across Scotland to join the network.
This year we will also launch a dedicated programme of events, co-working days, and workshops to build a strong retrofit community in Scotland. We will be sharing the learnings from our co-design approach follow on the Retrofit Scotland website here, or there will be more opportunities to join in the conversation at our future events.
These are just a few of the mechanisms in how small-scale action becomes transformative. Not by simply growing bigger, but by building the right infrastructure to connect, amplify, and sustain local efforts.
We can’t wait for top-down solutions
Small, community-led retrofit initiatives can have national impact, but only if we build the physical, digital, and human infrastructure to support them.
We can't wait for top-down solutions. We need to build the parallel infrastructure that allows retrofit to thrive from the ground up.
I believe the work of Retrofit Scotland, NRH, and other people working as part of the Retrofit Scotland Network are doing this, and I look forward to working with the entire community to accelerate retrofit action.
Written by Rob Morrison, Impact Manager, BE-ST