This is a CTP of initiative: Hackspace 2 (North-West of England, UK)
This CTP refers to the period of time in which two of the original founding members were removed from the leadership boards, and the subsequent restructuring of the organization.
The organization was loosely founded in 2009, with four co-directors – A, B, C, and D. The group had met each other through the technology scene in the city, and had been having a series of discussions around what a hackspace might look like, inspired by the rise of similar spaces across the US and Europe: “There was Noisebridge, there were DIYBio workshops; so we were talking about creating a makespace or hackspace in that mold. There were lots of small groups meeting in Manchester then, but there weren’t any spaces”. In the period of time around these initial discussions, premises became available for free for 18 months. The group decided to apply for funding, set up the organization, and move into the premises.
Shortly after this, B took up a role overseas and left the organization in the hands of A, C, and D. Over the course of the following 18 months, the directorship and finances of the organization became muddled, with revenue hat was intended for the hackspace going into towards C and D, as B described:
“It became apparent that [the other co-director] confused the hackspace with their existing business. When work came in for the hackspace, D took it as his business without telling me or A. Some contracts were put through us, but not all. At a time when we didn’t have many outgoings and we all had other jobs, it wasn’t too much of an issue, but I was aware of it”.
On her return to the UK, A took the finances of the organization in hand (as described in other CTPs), began preliminary fundraising, and addressed the issues around the leadership. After a series of attempted strategies about how responsibility could be partitioned and difficult conversations, D was asked to step down: “I had a conversation with him that we ended up having to ask to leave, and then forcing out”. C left shortly afterwards. After a further set of difficulties – “We spent a year trying to get our website back” – A and B restructured the organization, and stayed on as the only two directors.
This event acted as CTP because it resulted in the radical restructuring of the organization, but also allowed the new directorial team to consider the type of structure, planning, and responsibility that involvement in the hackspace would necessitate.
This CTP was shaped in part by the unexpected acquisition of the hackspace’s first premises, which forced the organisors to develop a plan of action more rapidly than they had otherwise anticipated:
“We had no business plan but thought, sod it, we’ll take it, and incorporated the business and put in for funding. It wasn’t necessarily seen as something beyond a 6 month project, but then we got our first contract and it went from there”.
As a result, the income stream was somewhat piecemeal, with money being drawn in from consultancy, grants, and some of the directors donating parts of their own income to the organization. This complex financial structure contributed to the difficulties later experienced in assigning responsibility between labour and income around the organization. The departure of one of the co-directors from the UK over this initial period also contributed to the difficulties which the organization faced – “I kept an eye on this – legal, business rates, accounting, and so on” – but acknowledged that she wasn’t able to fully engage in person with the scale of the problem until she had returned at the end of 2011, at the end of her job contract.
This CTP was shaped by the departure of one of the co-directors from the UK; the unexpected acquisition of a space for the organization; and the convoluted funding streams which the organization was dependent on in its first iteration.
This was an inherently difficult, conflict-based and challenging experience for the co-directors. In the period prior to the restructuring, B described her frustrations in negotiating the frictions around funding with C and D:
“When I found out how badly they’d dropped the ball – that they didn’t understanding funding, they hadn’t met deadlines, they hadn’t applied for anything, I said look, this was such a huge fuck-up but how are you going to handle it in the future?”.
As part of this, she attended funding meetings with C and D where she experienced them giving poor presentations and behaving unprofessionally, “just terrible”.
The process of trying to find a solution to the problems took over a year, and comprised careful considerations around how the responsibilities of the directors could be shifted to meet the capacity of the people currently involved: “We needed someone as a director, not just someone coming in and taking the cash. I asked [the other co-directors] ‘Do you want to be a chief exec or take a public facing role, or do you want to help but not take a wage because we can’t really sustain that, or help us get into shape?’”
In this time, B considered stepping down but decided that to do so would cause more harm than good. This concern for the well-being of the organization ultimately drove the request for the other co-directors to leave:
“I contemplated leaving myself, but knew if I did then the hackspace wouldn’t exist. The other co-directors weren’t in a position to run any of the financial elements of it, even just the basics of manning staff or bringing in the income, finding a way to pay the bills. I felt that if I left, the organization went down. If they went, the organization would have a chance to flourish.”.
The outcomes of this CTP were unexpected – as described above, once the problems around funding had been identified, the co-directors tried to find a way to keep the directorial structure and positioning of the organization together, with the absenting of directors only as a last resort – “I thought, it’ll just fuck a lot of things up if I step away”.
The difficulties that emerged after C and D had left, regarding getting the website back and other legal issues, were unexpected. The events contained within the CTP around funding splits were also unexpected – as described above, the co-founders had set up a range of structures to allow some directors to be paid, but did anticipate the split between labour and income that occurred:
Whilst the year posed a series of unexpected challenges, B described how she felt equal to taking them on: “I definitely felt capable of dealing with it. I set out clearly what we needed to do, and not everyone could come along for the ride”. However, when the restructuring had taken place, she realized that she would not be able to describe the events of this CTP to those outside the organization because of the complex dynamics involved:
“There’s the story you tell other people, and the story you tell yourself. D said that we were chasing the money which wasn’t true at all – everything goes back into our community, and everything has to evolve and change.”
Due to the financial mis-management at play, this CTP would happened in one form or another. Had it been left untouched or - as described above – had B decided to leave, the organization would likely have closed.
This CTP permitted a lot of learning for the remaining co-directors, albeit through difficult conversations and strategic actions. The directors learnt that they had to explicitly codify how time, money, and tasks were demarcated in the space, rather than relying on social expectations at a distance:
“[We’d got] some money from a funder, so said, let’s give this money to C so that he can have a paid position at the space, with the expectation that he would put in the time to develop the organisation and get some projects done. But that didn’t happen. Then we donated more funds, and it got to the stage where we’d brought in £100k of funding but hadn’t seen it. We had some meetings but nothing came of it.”
Through these discussions, the B also learnt about what she wanted the hackspace to be – and thus its transformational goals - and the amount of work involved in creating this, rather than that intimated by C and D: “If you want a nice cosy community space that you get an office out of, that’s fine, but that’s not what [the organisation] is or should be.”
As noted above, the CTP affected the long-term operations of the hackspace inasmuch as it permitted it to survive, and later flourish. The event shaped the networks of the hackspace through the shifting leadership and (as above) the development of a narrative which the new directors were required to develop to neutrally explain the events which had taken place.
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