This is a CTP of initiative: FabLab 3 (North‐East England)
This CTP relates to the discussion made concerning the organisation’s purpose and growth strategy.
As described in other CTPs, the organisation had moved through several different identities over the course of its existence. Initially set-up as an Arduino meet-up, the organisation then morphed into a co-working space with a workshop attached, intended to support both the city’s nascent technology start-ups, and provide education and resilience for the wide social communities. These identities and practices were shaped as much by what the organistion was as what it was not (ie. Not specifically or only a hackspace, FabLab, charity, or co-working space). The organisation’s premises and activities reflected this complex mix of activities and intentions, comprising the ‘clean space’ of desks for co-working, and the ‘dirty space’ of the tools workshop; together with various ‘hacker’, ‘maker’, and educational events. This mix of activities were in theory, meant to be supported by renting out the desks in the co-working space. However, as described in other CTPs, this route proved to be difficult to sustain financially, leading the founders to question how they could continue. To find a way through this difficulty, a new director S forced a meeting of the organising team in 2014 in which they were asked to explicitly identify what they intended the space to be:
“We had an organisers meeting in the pub about where it was all going, a full meeting of everyone, including the guys who had dropped off the radar. S made us articulate our vision of what [the organisation] would be in the next 2 years. That was important – it had been a mess, but after that it was clearer about what we were doing”.
This meeting allowed the organisers to be vocal about, and recognise the differences, in what they wanted the organisation to be and how they would move forwards. It acted as a CTP because it both allowed the organisers to build a long-term strategy around their work, but also to manifest and make visible the many unsaid and tacit assumptions and directions which had directed the organisation’s trajectory over the three years of its operations.
This CTP was shaped by the introduction of a new director, S, to the organisation in 2014 who, by dint of being new to the community was able to offer a fresh appraisal of the tangles that the organisation had found itself in over the four years of its operations. As described in other CTPs, S arrived at a point when the organisation had found that its presumed business model – rent for co-working desks and membership of the workshop space covering other associated expenses – had foundered. This was due in part to the ebbs and flows of membership that happened over the course of each year; but also due to the free ‘taster’ membership offered to new members which assumed that newcomers would be interested in participating in the community over the longer term, rather than simply making use of resources over a single day:
“We had a thing where you can hot-desk free on your first day if you can bring cake. It acts as an ice-breaker, you can come and see we’re not monsters, you can learn to do this [hardware] stuff too. People turn up who are interested, who have an idea; they don’t always get to implement it and sometimes just turn up expecting someone else to do most of the work. But there were people who just came with cake and we never see them again; because it’s cheaper that way, to get in a full day at the workshop for a cake rather than however much you’d have to pay somewhere else.”
This quote also indicates how the organisation was shaped as much by what it was as what it was not, and the knock-on effects on generating revenue. Whilst there were differences of opinions (as described below) in what the organisation’s purpose was, all of the founders were clear – through their own framings – that the organisation was not like any of the other types of shared working or machine shops in other cities. The organisation’s focus on deskspace differentiated it from being a hackspace; the focus on community-building differentiated it (as the founders saw it) from being a FabLab; and the focus on machines and making differentiated it from being a traditional co-working space. This unusual combination of identities had constrained the growth of the space in its own way, as one co-founder described:
“I’ve seen there’s a new FabLab close to my house. They’re advertising for how to pay hundreds of pounds for a single day of 3D printing. I wonder, is it crazy to just turn up to us with some cake and expect someone to show you how a laser cutter works?” Similarly, another founder noted that he’d already been asked to bring his knowledge of how to set up a community machine shop to other social enterprise spaces in the city, but not to also develop the co-working business-based side: “I’ve been approached lots by [city] people about setting a specific makerspace up for them, especially in the North of the city which is a very deprived area. I always say yes, but it never comes to anything”.
This CTP was shaped by the introduction of a new director to the organising team; the limitations of the organisation’s business model at that time; and the rise of hackspaces, FabLabs, and other forms of collective machine shops in the UK.
The co-founders didn’t report any particular conflict or friction around this CTP – rather, they were all grateful that they had had a chance to air and discuss the various motivations that they had each been working with, unsaid, over the previous 4 years. Across these approaches, there were a wide variety of understandings about what the purpose of the organisation was, which sometimes drew energy and resources from the others. For one co-founder, community building was the primary goal:
“I’m on a lifelong mission to see how you can grow communities. I work with open source software, I run hackdays; I’m fascinated by what happens when you get users and developers in the same room and show that you can cut out the middleman. I like starting communities and staying with them until them until they get on their feet, and I like working on the same principles as open source – be nice, be friendly, try to get people involved, don’t be an arsehole. So part of the reason that [the organisation] is there is not just as a makerspace but to improve the tech community generally in [the city], we’re very city focused. Getting people in to hot-desk is great, you get to meet loads of cool people working on interesting stuff. But that’s not the primary focus”.
Another founder, however, was keen on building a large space which would continue to be as multi-purpose as the organisation already was, only at a larger scale: “I was more interested in the maker side – I was blatant about what I wanted, something like 3rd Ward [a now-defunct artist collective and workshop] in New York. I had a big vision, this was going to be all things to all people. I still want that, a big makerspace, arts space, party space, all in one place, but even bigger than that”.
By contrast and as discussed in other CTPs, one founder H was primarily interested in the co-working aspect of the space; which came into conflict with the original founder A’s vision for a space which was intrinsically bound up with a workshop (“I was only ever interested in getting a makerspace”).
As described in other CTPs, the co-founders had been aware for some time both that the business model of the organisation was not as viable or sustainable over the longer term. They were also aware that, as the number of other co-working spaces and shared machine shops rose in the local area, their own organisation had taken on and developed a technical identity which they had not anticipated and which affected the community dynamics of the space:
“There are a number of different co-working spaces in [the city] now and we’re considered to be the hardcore technical one, even though that isn’t so. So the workshops get under-utilised, the hotdesks are ok, the permanent desks peak and trough. And it’s hard to get people along to events – it’s not that they don’t want to meet new people, but that they think they don’t know enough [technical skills] to get started.”
The arrival of S, and the instigation of the meeting which formed the CTP was unexpected, and appreciated – not least given the difficulties in assembling everyone together (“It’s always a nightmare to get all the organisers together in a room”); although the co-founders had been aware for some time that there were different opinions that they all held about what the space should be.
The co-founders were also aware that the ambiguities and uncertainties around the nature of their organisation mirrored those of the city’s own tech scene, which had constantly been a challenge in terms of how they presented themselves: “It’s hard to unpick what the tech scene is in the city – you’ve got the universities, hardware, making; [one university] has put on a barcamp and set up a Jelly co-working space, they ran a FabCamp, so it’s hard to pin down”.
In the absence of this CTP, the organisers of the space would not have been given the opportunity to articulate their different visions and would have struggled to develop a viable business model for the organisation.
This CTP acted as a learning opportunity for the organisation as it permitted the co-founders to learn about the other’s motivations in their work; and also the extent to which these motivations defined, were driven by, hindered, or had been hindered by the transformational aims of the organisation. One co-founders aim, for example, to “build a community and give access to these new digital fabrication tools” had been met, but was still not providing access to a wide enough community (as described above). The aims of another to build a sustainable community had already been met, permitting him to step back from the organisation and focus on new emergent projects. In this way, this CTP allowed the organisers to learn how their own starting points for getting involved in the organisation had co-evolved with the changing dynamics of the organisation itself.
This CTP acted as a form of networking within the organisation. Despite sharing the organisation’s premises, it was – as described above – difficult to get all of the organisers together in one space to discuss plans; with this issue being exacerbated by the fact that some of the initial co-founders had stepped back from their involvement with the organisation. However, this CTP also exemplifies the importance of a new member of the network – as with the issue of whether to accept or apply for external funding (as described in other CTPs), the co-founders had been tacitly working with a set of principles over the course of the organisation’s history, but without openly articulating them. Unlike the funding CTP in which the organisers had been broadly operating in alignment (albeit for somewhat different motivations), this CTP embodied a very different set of principles at play.
This CTP permitted the organisation to develop long-term strategy by understanding what motivations the organisers had for participating in the space, the commitments (both time and money) that they could make to it, and how to build on the existing community and infrastructures which had been built up over the 4 years of the organisation’s history.
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