Travelling Power Station: Creating energy around energy
In November 2025, Homebaked CLT – now Two Up Two Down – joined community organisations, researchers, artists and local people from across the North West to take part in a series of workshops to co-produce and design the Travelling Power Station.
The Travelling Power Station is a travelling pop-up exhibition about community and local energy. It was developed in response to a simple challenge: while communities across the UK are increasingly involved in conversations about housing, food, care and local ownership, energy can still feel distant, technical and difficult to engage with.
How electricity is generated, owned, saved and shared is an important question in creating fairer places for people to thrive. The Travelling Power Station was created as a way to open up those conversations, creating opportunities for communities to explore what energy means in their everyday lives and what role they might play in shaping its future.
What interested us most wasn't just the idea itself, but the way it was being developed.
The workshops brought together people and organisations to collectively imagine what the Travelling Power Station could be. We weren't presented with a finished concept and asked for feedback. Instead, we were invited into the process from the beginning. Together we explored questions about who it was for, what it should feel like, what stories it should tell and what role it could play in communities.
For us, this is really important. There's a clear difference between consultation and participation.
Consultation often happens once the decisions have already been made. People are asked for their opinions on something that already exists. While there is a place for consultation, it can sometimes feel like a box-ticking exercise, where participation is limited to commenting on someone else's ideas.
Participation is and feels different. Participation means being involved in shaping the idea from the outset. It means recognising that communities hold knowledge, experience and imagination that are essential to creating meaningful projects. It means understanding that the process is just as important as the outcome.
We believe when people feel meaningfully involved, they develop a natural sense of ownership and investment. They are more likely to engage, contribute and help carry a project forward because they can see themselves reflected within it.
The Travelling Power Station is an excellent example of what that can look like in practice.
It's not simply an exhibition about community energy. The process of creating it has itself been an exercise in community energy – bringing people together to share ideas, challenge assumptions and imagine new possibilities.
This summer, we are the first community to host the Travelling Power Station right here in Anfield.
As a project designed to evolve through the places and communities it visits, we're already thinking about what it could become here.
Could it create space for conversations about warmer, healthier homes and retrofit? Could it help people understand where their energy comes from and how it affects their everyday lives? Could it become a place to share stories, skills and experiences? Or perhaps it could simply provide an opportunity for neighbours to come together and imagine futures for our community.
How would you use the Travelling Power Station? What conversations should it spark? What stories should it collect? What could it offer our neighbourhood?
Come and see for yourself, and share your ideas at our Neighbourhood Summer Party!
Neighbourhood Summer Party on Saturday 11th July 2pm-9pm at Kitty’s Laundrette 77 Grasmere St, Liverpool L5 6RH.