Rhisom was founded by a small group of LGBTQIA+ people living in Cardiff following a series of community-organised workshops. Our aim is to create a platform for queer people to engage in wider political action and community building. This means fostering a home rooted in connection to nature, community and culture in which justice, sustainability and compassion thrives.

Rhisom became officially registered as a cooperative society with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in May 2023, and currently has six members.

Our core values are Radical Care, Respect, Pluriversality, Interdependence, Abolition and Food Justice. We want to care for each other and other beings in a non-individualistic way, recognise, value and learn from our differences whilst challenging normative practices and beliefs. We want to foster a culture of shared responsibility, open communication and promote transformative systems whilst dismantling punitive ones. Naturally, healthy sustainable food is central to Rhisom.

Right now, we have set eyes on a property in Cardiff which is perfect for the community space and home we want to build for our members. We are in the middle of writing an application for Welsh Government’s Land and Buildings Development Fund that will hopefully award us with the appropriate funds to secure the property.

We are hoping that the Cardiff Council will recognise the importance of our project and the positive impact it will have on the wider community and will grant us a planning permission to bring our project to fruition. Casey and Jonathan from Cwmpas are doing an amazing job at supporting us through these heavily bureaucratic processes. 

Over the past few months we here at Cwmpas’ Communities Creating Homes team have been supporting Nefyn Town Trust to realise their ambition of expanding their existing community-led housing offer by developing four new homes in the town.

The primary objective of the Trust is to provide high-quality homes to rent at affordable rates. Over a period of many years they have developed a reputation as a socially-conscious, responsive and reliable community landlord, committed to the wellbeing of their tenants and the maintenance and modernisation of the homes they manage, which currently total twenty-six.

 At the end of 2023 Nefyn Town Trust received a revenue grant through the Welsh Government’s Perthyn programme. This grant – which aims to sustain Welsh-speaking communities through the establishment of social enterprises, co-operatives and community-led housing projects – is helping the Trust to compile feasibility reports on two different sites in Nefyn. We as a team have the great pleasure of working alongside the board of trustees to identify gaps in knowledge, commission specialist surveys and – most importantly – consult the community about local housing needs and future aspirations.

 We are extremely excited to watch this project succeed in its goal to bring more affordable homes for rent to a region of North Wales severely impacted by the second homes and holiday lets crises, and we look forward to updating you again in the near future.