Everyday Changemakers: Tom Nockolds from Loco Home Retrofit

Kaska Hempel, our Story Weaver, interviews Tom Nockolds, who is one of the people behind the community-driven retrofit project, Loco Home Retrofit, based in Glasgow. This episode complements video recordings of presentations from the "SCCAN Member Networking and Skillshare Meet up: Talking about Retrofitting", which took place on 25 August 2023. You can find them on SCCAN YouTube channel. Credits: Interview and audio production: Kaska Hempel. Resources: SCCAN YouTube channel with the recording from the members skillshare on community-led retrofitting, 25th August 2023: https://www.youtube.com/@scottishcommunitiesclimate6914/videos Loco Home Retrofit https://locohome.coop/ SEDA Retrofit conference, 15-16 September 2023 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/seda-conference-2023-progressing-retrofit-comfort-health-affordability-tickets-692329465067  Transcript [00:00:00] Kaska Hempel: Hello, it's Kaska, one of your Story Weavers. Last Friday I attended one of SCCAN's Member Skillshares. Focused on a truly wicked problem of retrofitting our very energy inefficient Scottish homes. [00:00:16] Kaska Hempel: Our housing stock seems to be one of the worst in Europe for energy efficiency, which makes it unhealthy, uncomfortable, and expensive to heat. Yet there's not been nearly enough progress made on this so far by our governments. [00:00:32] Kaska Hempel: Very frustrating indeed. So, I was impressed how a couple of Scottish grassroots organisations are taking matters in their own hands. By treating this as a community problem or rather a community driven solution, and this way [00:00:48] Kaska Hempel: Moving things ahead locally. [00:00:50] Kaska Hempel: This inspired me to interview one of the presenters, Tom Nockolds, who's behind one of the community driven projects, Loco Home Retrofit in Glasgow. For more details on the retrofit projects themselves, you can watch recordings of the Skillshare on SCCAN's YouTube channel as soon as they're processed. And as usual, we put all the other relevant links in the episode notes for you. [00:01:15] Kaska Hempel: And if you'd like to delve into the nitty gritty of holistic approach to retrofitting, have a look at the Scottish Ecological Design Association Conference on the subject, which is taking place in Glasgow and on Zoom on the 15th and 16th of September. [00:01:32] Kaska Hempel: But for now, let's go back to our Everyday Changemakers story and find out what makes Tom tick. [00:01:41] Tom Nockolds: I'm Tom Nockolds. I live in Glasgow and I'm the co-founder and co-executive Officer of Loco Home Retrofit. Loco Home Retrofit is a cooperative, as well as a community interest company whose mission is to decarbonise homes in Glasgow. And we're very focused on privately owned households. We operate in the space of retrofit, which is a bit of a technical jargonistic term. Simply means refitting, energy efficiency, and low carbon heating into existing buildings. And our mission is to make better retrofit more accessible for more people in Glasgow. [00:02:29] Kaska Hempel: Great. That sounds amazing. why Loco? [00:02:33] Tom Nockolds: We struggled with a name for a little while. I was saying to Chris, co-founder, I was saying to Chris, you know, let's not give ourselves a boring name like Glasgow, Retrofit Co-op. [00:02:47] Tom Nockolds: And he was really on board with that idea. And we eventually settled on Loco because it's a bit of a play on low carbon 'cause we are a climate change action organisation, but it's also about local community. And thirdly, and very much last and least, we did acknowledge that Loco does have a meaning in some other languages. And we wanted to acknowledge that what we were doing was a little bit crazy, you know? [00:03:18] Kaska Hempel: Because [00:03:18] Kaska Hempel: Loco is Spanish for a bit mad, isn't it? [00:03:22] Tom Nockolds: It might be a mild way of putting it, so I'm a bit hesitant to focus too much on the Loco with that def