All-Ireland Housing Awards winner 2024

Promoting shared and inclusive communities

Woven (formerly Habinteg Housing Association (Ulster) Ltd) was founded in 1976 as a registered housing association in Northern Ireland.

They plan, develop and manage ‘integrated’ housing schemes in both urban and rural areas throughout the region and work with a number of partner organisations in providing supported housing projects.

Woven represents not only their name, but also what they do. Their aim is to develop housing and bring people together to create thriving neighbourhoods, weaving together homes, lives, and communities to help create a shared vision of an inclusive Northern Ireland. Their vision, ‘Homes, Lives and Communities; Woven, as one’ encapsulates this central aim.

To achieve their vision, Woven provide housing which combines a range of dwelling types - family houses, apartments, and bungalows - in order to appropriately meet the needs of the widest range of users, including older persons and persons with a disability. Quality, sustainable developments include large and medium sized suburban housing developments, inner city apartments, individual rural cottages, and specialised housing schemes. Partnership projects include sensitively designed housing with care schemes, temporary accommodation for people who are homeless, and housing initiatives for people with additional support needs. 

The standard and quality of Woven’s developments has been recognised at local and national level with an impressive list of high-profile awards, including the UK Housing Award for Outstanding Achievement in Social Housing in Northern Ireland and the RICS Award for the Northern Ireland region. They are also a Customer Service Excellence organisation and have Investor in People Gold status.

Woven is committed to providing accessible, affordable, inclusive homes and excellent services to enrich the lives and communities of all tenants. They believe that by supporting and encouraging neighbourhoods where everyone in the community is valued and respected, and where diversity is celebrated, they can help build a shared and safe society that is enriched by cultural diversity. To do this, they put tenants at the heart of their services and invite participation and tenant involvement. All Woven tenants sign a good neighbour agreement outlining a commitment to show respect to neighbours and treat everyone fairly.

During 2023, Woven organised a whole range of initiatives in collaboration with tenants, community groups and statutory organisations to increase community cohesion among tenants and the wider communities around their housing schemes. Among this range of initiatives were the many projects codesigned with advisory groups – representatives from local community groups – along with elected representatives and statutory organisations.

The key to the success of the advisory groups was the grass roots approach to delivering good relations with people from the community. Having knowledge of local issues, able to identify relevance of themes and gaps in delivery offers knowhow which helps reduce duplication of events, activities and services, and flags programmes which complement existing local services.

A good example in 2023 was the Culture Calendar - delivered to tenants across Northern Ireland in partnership with Radius Housing and ArtsEkta. The launch of the project was celebrated in Good Relations week in September, working with four primary schools from across Coleraine and Portrush, one of Woven’s Housing for All neighbourhoods. Over 100 children of primary seven age joined dozens of tenants for the event in Portstewart, to learn about cultures from India, Eastern Europe and Mexico - celebrating traditional music, art and dance.

Following the successful launch event, the communities team delivered 200 culture boxes and calendars to tenants, advisory group members and primary schools in Portrush and Holywood – another of their Housing for All communities. The culture boxes included crafts, recipe cards and information cards on customs from around the world and the calendar provided information and interesting facts on a different country each month.

Quarterly events through 2023 helped to sustain the calendar, with primary schools, local communities and residents, coming together to experience the customs, arts, foods and cultures of China, Poland, India and Spain.

Feedback from the events provide evidence of the success of the projects:

Tenant

It was wonderful to see tenants coming together from different schemes from around the Northwest to celebrate diversity and inclusivity. We had a wonderful afternoon learning about the different Indian traditions and cultures and loved the Indian cooking demo followed by lunch.

Tenant

I would love to see a lot more of these types of events celebrating our commonalities and differences from across the North.

Leanne Penn  |  teacher at Mill Strand Primary School

A very enjoyable event that the children gained a lot from. It is extremely important for pupils to be accepting of people who are different from themselves while respecting and celebrating the differences in all people. It also encouraged the children to build friendships with other children from other Portrush primary schools.

Primary seven pupil at Mill Strand Primary School

I have realised that we’re all humans living in this world and despite our differences in how we look or dress, or what we eat or how we talk, we should all accept the different cultures from around the world.

Through all of the events they promoted shared spaces and provided support to tenants.  Everyone had the opportunity to make positive contributions to their community, developing a sense of belonging and community ownership.

Statistics from the Culture Calendar programme 2023:

• Advisory group of 12-15 participants involved in the codesign of events, met three times in the year
• 200 cultural boxes distributed
• 200 culture calendars distributed
• Four primary schools involved
• 1,500 participants benefited from taking part in the project.

Woven believe the Culture Calendar programme was innovative in its engagement, promoting diversity and involving the widest range of people and groups in terms of race, age, ethnicity, religion, disability, economic status, sexual orientation, and housing tenure. They worked closely with community groups to help with promotion among tenants and tenants from the surrounding communities both rural and urban.