This is a CTP of initiative: Hackspace 2 (North-West of England, UK)
This CTP describes the extended time which the hackspace had to spend outside of their premises whilst building work was underway, and the research done around membership during this time.
As described in other CTPs, the organisers had serendipitously found the hackspace premises in 2009, in the very early days of the organisation’s inception; and were unexpectedly able to take on very large premises in a central part of the city, very cheaply: “We had a chat in a pub, and saw that a ‘For Rent’ sign had gone up outside it”. This act spurred the formation of the hackspace, with the directors rapidly filing to create a company and submitting their first funding bid. In order to fill the space, the directors brought in a range of other small organisations to rent out space to:
“We talked about co-working then, identifying groups who’d be keen to co-work with us, which wasn’t a big thing then either. We said that one group could have one floor out of a 3 floor building, to help us to cover costs”.
In addition, the directors also brought in a nascent local makespace who had recently lost their premises. As the hackspace developed and grew, it became apparent that the building was both materially unfit for purpose (“It was an utter pit, horrible, stinky, vile, dirty, and ramshackle”); and also not able to support the growing community and different strategic aims of the directors. After raising funding with the council and getting additional support from the landlord, the hackspace moved into nearby temporary premises in early 2014 whilst the building was refurbished. The renovation work took substantially longer than anticipated – however, this extended time permitted the directors to gather information about future strategic directors and raise further rounds of funding:
“We had to leave the building for what we thought was 6 weeks but turned out to be 7 months. We ended up in the basement of another building. We maybe should have shut it all down but we had all the groups and they had to keep going, so we had to keep going. We got back to our old place in September 2015. In the basement though, we had time to do surveys, asking people what benefits they got out of [the hackspace], then put in the major funding applications that we had breathing space to do”.
One of the outcomes of these funding applications was that it permitted one of the directors to take up full time employment with the organisation.
This event acted as a CTP because it permitted the structural changes necessary to allow the organisation to expand its capacity; but also, unexpectedly, result in the employment in one of the directors for the hackspace.
This CTP was shaped by the changing strategies of the organisation, and how these were limited by their premises. By early 2013, the hackspace was experiencing a period of rapid growth and expansion, both in terms of community usage, and with partnerships with other community groups. The organisation struggled in terms of space with regard to several of the community groups that they hosted who, in expanding through the support that the hackspace had given them, had outgrown the building. Additionally, the number of groups within the building had grow, from 40 in late 2012, to over 70 in late 2014.
At that stage, the directors felt that within 2 years, a wider solution needed to be found to ensure sustainability. As part of this solution, the organisation made requests to the local council that they be permitted to refurbish the ground floor of their building in such a way which would create larger space with which to host larger events; install a disabled lift and new stairs; and create an extended kitchen space. This CTP was further shaped by the support given to them by the local council in permitting them to undertake this work – in the UK, adapting premises of buildings frequently requires planning permission from local government bodies.
This CTP was shaped by the changing strategies of the organisation; and the use of the hackspace for co-working by other groups.
The directors reported no particular contestation or friction around this CTP. As described above, at the time that this CTP occurred, the building which the organisation was hosted in was essentially unfit for purpose which was a point of ongoing frustration. Similarly, the extended stay in the temporary premises was not expected, or desired, and acted as a source of frustration; but the directors were aware within this period that the move itself was not permanent and that the situation would resolve itself, eventually.
The factors which led to this CTP, viz the growth in number and size of the organisations hosted within the hackspace, was unanticipated. As detailed above, the number of groups nearly doubled in number over the course of a 12-month period; and several of these groups had thus unexpectedly outgrown the space – for example, one group had garnered over 500 members and had to hold its events out of the premises; another youth group with over 100 members had to move in with a different organisation; and a tech meet-up had spread from one to two floors in the building which was ‘not ideal’.
The development plans for the premises were, however, highly anticipated and planned in accordance with local council requirements. The adaptations were extensive and costly, encompassing the changes detailed above and requiring considerable architectural and structural planning - for example, as part of the space extension and creating two rooms from one, an interior column in the building had to be removed to increase capacity and line of right. The length of time which these changes took once the building work was underway was not anticipated, but it permitted the directors to develop additional research and user engagement activities; and, ultimately bring in the funding to employ one of the organisers, who then generated further funding to support the organisation:
“He’d been working as a technologist for a [local] company – by Christmas 2014 he could start here on a job-share, then went full time in April 2015. In the first two weeks he wrote an Arts Council England grant that we got shortlisted for and that let us move into the arts-tech space”.
The renovation work encompassed in this CTP enabled the organisation to meet its transformational aims by creating further opportunities over the longer term to support local community groups, and engender education and outreach around technology, science, and art. These include opening up the building to the street to increase presence to the locality; creating more capacity in terms of disabled access; establishing a writers’ centre, and creating teaching space for schools and local businesses. Through these activities, the hackspace also aimed to extend its network across these different groups and partners.
These activities were intended to support the organisation over the medium term, from 2-5 years. The organisers had originally looked at splitting the organisation over two buildings to accommodate growth, but realised that idea they “should be housed in one location”. However, this work did not mark the end of growth and change for the organisation: at the time of interview (January 2016), one of the directors identified the next steps for the organisation: “We need a new venue, again, but prices are going up in the city. Ideally we need 15 and a half thousand square feet in space, so to support that we’ll need to start upping our grants, we need to move from the hundreds of thousands to the millions in what we raise”. As this quote indicates, the shift to better equipped premises brought with a number of additional institutional challenges to make the process self-sustaining over the longer term.
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