This is a CTP of initiative: Hackspace 1 (North of England, UK)
This CTP refers to the decision to change the space from an online-only group, to move to a physical shop space in centre of the town. This hackspace initially began as a Facebook group for a “virtual hackspace”. Its co-founders were keen to create a space for hacking and making activities but were unsure in the first instance whether it would be supported by their local community: “We had the idea it would be something to do, which would be really important, but at the start I was really concerned that there wouldn’t be enough people to make it sustainable”. As the Facebook group grew, acquiring more people, the co-founders were able to gage interest in what type of space members might want. When the group had reached a “decent size – a couple of hundred people”, the co-founders were offered a space inside a small shop in the middle of their town. At this point, the co-founders felt that the size of the online group and the discussion that went on within it was sufficient to warrant moving into a physical space. The shop was also offered extremely cheaply, making it a low-risk proposition for the co-founders – “We had arrangements with the council if a community interest group or charity could make use of it, if we were”. The move took place in early 2015. This CTP was important for facilitating the first instantiation of the physical hackspace, building on the development of an existing community; and for learning about what type of physical space was actually most suitable to the needs of the community itself.
This CTP was shaped by the initial ‘virtual’ founding of the hackspace. The co-founder who had led its creation described how the process of going from hearing about hackspaces to moving into premises took over 3 years: “I wanted a hackspace. I’d heard about hackspaces in 2012 after I got involved with NHS [UK National Health Service] hackdays, these hackathons that happen over a weekend where people pitch ideas and then build them. I started to find out about where the idea came from, and how it all came from the hackspace ethos. I met the guy who ran NHS hackdays and he also ran a hackspace in a nearby city. I got to know him, found out about how he did it and thought that would be really good”. At the time the initial co-founder was a freelance IT consultant who had “a fair bit of free time in the week. I could remote work so, when we got the [first premises], I could remote work from there. It would be open, and I would be working”.
The capacity for Facebook to host and develop a community also drove this CTP. The online platform community tools have been intentionally designed to make it easy for users to set up, customize, and publicise groups in which members can engage in discussion and host content. This ease, plus the prevalence of the platform – in 2015, approximately half of the UK population had a Facebook account - made it a convenient and supportive space to create and host a nascent community. The group later migrated the community to a separate, self-hosted messageboard site which gave them greater independence and choice about the types of discussions which could be hosted; whilst maintaining the Facebook group to publicize events.
Finally, the availability of cheap office space facilitated this CTP. Leigh is a small town in the North-West of England whose population has remained around the same – roughly 42,000 people – over the past century. As described in later CTPs, the town has lost many of its industries (mining and cotton); and is extremely economically deprived. As a result, retail space in the town is not at a premium, and local council policy supports the development of community groups and charities which might offer social, cultural, and economic benefit to the town. The empty shop space which the hackspace first moved into would likely have cost far more in a different, more economically buoyant region.
This CTP was shaped by the initial ‘virtual’ founding of the space; the development of the online community, and the availability of cheap office space.
The co-founders did not report any tensions or difficulties about taking on their first space. Whilst the online platform hosted many lively discussions, the decision to move into the space was not a controversial one.
This was understood to be a critical CTP at the time, as it permitted the online community to move into a physical space and thus become a true hackspace. The consequence of this move – that the organization would be forced to move to a second space a year later after the space proved unsuitable for the organisation’s needs (described in CTP2) - were unseen.
It is difficult to ascertain what would have happened in the absence of this CTP. The organization would likely have continued to grow its membership online and search for a space; and it is possible that the second space which the hackspace moved into would still have been available then. As described elsewhere, the town has many empty spaces to let due to its economic hardships, so the organization may have found a space more rapidly still.
As described above, the development of the organization about through initial links being formed with a larger hackspace in a local city, where the founders were able to learn about the types of issues – community, space, funding models – that they might want to take into consideration when building their own organization. This CTP permitted the organization of fulfilling its transformative aims by dint of realizing its ability to become a physical space. However, it also allowed the group to maintain a virtual community at distance, who had the choice of joining the physical space if they so wanted, as one of the co-founders described:
“On Facebook we have 450 members of the hackspace group, all watching what we’re doing, so they get updates and stuff. Many of them have never been to hackspaces, and you know, maybe they’ll never come to a hackspace, not ever. But you might tick the box for somebody. They might be lurking in the Facebook group thinking ‘Ah, I might go down one day. And then, sooner or later, we’ll put on an event and they’ll go ‘Right, that’s for me’.”
As this quote describes, the combination of physical and virtual spaces allowed the organization to support a community who were interested in the broad concepts of ‘making’ and ‘hacking’ but not necessarily participating; whilst also maintaining the physical space necessary for these practices to happen.
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