Raising the Roof

2021- present 



Raising the Roof is a collaboration between Adele Patrick, Sue John and Janice Parker, creatives facing the real-life prospect of current Care Home culture. We are committed to generating a provocative alternative model that we hope will solve our ethical, financial and aesthetic housing needs as we make the shift into living their older lives.  Raising the Roof are actively asking how can support be mobilised that could make manifest homes that are, affordable, secure, of the highest quality and embody the changes we want to see in the world?

Founded in 2018 Raising the Roof has become an increasingly urgent and direct response both to the personal situations they find themselves in and to the housing, social care and economic landscape.


Raising the Roof has had support from Archifringe who hosted a residency in 2019 and in 2021 where the festival supported the development of films and a publication.


Adele, Sue and Janice were filmed at The Lighthouse, Glasgow, Scotland on Saturday 8th June 2019. They share their political and personal rationales behind their quest, desire and need to develop a new, better, model of housing as they begin the journey into living their older lives. 


Click here for the Architecture Fringe 2019 ‘Home At Last’ video.

For the six days of the residency Raising the Roof made daily podcasts. Click here to listen.
Households:  ‘The Un(ruly) Book


In 2021, Raising the Roof were supported to collaborate with Voices of Experience project to create a series of short films and a publication Households:  ‘The Un(ruly) Book. Raising the Roof are committed to sharing the progress towards their aims and gaining knowledge and support by working ‘in public’.


Households draws from personal reflections of living and ageing. It is inspired by Raising the Roof’s aspirations to construct an alternative to what is available in the current political landscape of housing, social care, and economics: Home, at Last (Archifringe 2019).


Following the onset of the pandemic,  in summer 2020, Voices of Experience (VoE) invited their participants and the Raising the Roof  team to consider how they/we might ‘live our older lives’. Sketchbooks were sent out for gathering thoughts, images and values which were later shared in audio and zoomed conversations.
The (un)ruly book was co-produced through further discussions and the specific creative practices of the VoE and RtR teams. It is organised around 5 scenes which aim to (un)learn how a design for a specific place and group might be taken forward.

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Click here to view the Raising the Roof and Voices of Experience: Households, The (Un)ruly Book

I also recent contributed to RIAS Quarterly, Autumn 2020 Issue 43 ‘Activism in Architecture’ where I share the Raising the Roof story.