This is a CTP of initiative: Hackspace 2 (North-West of England, UK)
This CTP describes the comparative loss of support and resources which the space was able to access by dint of being located in the North of England.
As described in other CTPs, this space was founded in a major city in the North of England where the co-founders all lived. Whilst the purpose of the hackspace fluctuated and evolved since its inception in 2008, many of its goals and activities centred around grassroots innovation activities which supported socio-economic aims for local citizens (in addition to an emerging arts-tech program which also broadly supports skills development and self-actualisation). Over the course of its development, the directors had moved to develop a business model which wasn’t wholly dependent on external funding, but was self-supportive through other income streams such as workshops.
However, in late 2015/early 2016 (at the time of interviews), one of the co-directors articulated how she realised that the organisation may not have taken full advantage of the wave of funding and support across the ‘maker movement’, that had been afforded to other hackspaces, makespaces, and machine shops:
“It’s not that we missed it, but we had a real opportunity to drive it, the maker movement. And we’re in [Northern city] as well. Groups in London have done so well, like Makerversity. We’d heard about it, but they went for it before we did and ended up getting that space. And that’s helped them massively because they didn’t have to pay £30,000 for a space. Building BloQs got £3 million from the local government in London, and they’ll be the biggest makerspace in Europe. And it’s like ‘Shit, we missed a trick – that could have been us, we left it open’”.
These issues were exacerbated by the location of this hackspace in a large city in the North of England, meaning that it was not eligible for the types of local government funding which supported social enterprises in more deprived locations in the region; but were also not able to access the pool of technical and creative talent based around London.
This realisation acted as a CTP because it defined a point where the directors realised the toll that trying to realign the organisation’s directions and finances had taken in previous years (as described in other CTPs for this hackspace); and moved to realign their strategies to take advantage of the rise in funding around the maker movement, and be mindful of the limits of their local resources.
This CTP was shaped by the emergence of hackspaces and similar grassroots innovation initiatives around machine shops which emerged in the late 2000s in the UK. As described for other SIIs in the TRANSIT project, these organisations began to emerge and be founded by volunteers in response to a number of related factors including: the emergence of comparatively low-cost open hardware platforms such as Arduino; learning from similar organisations in the US (eg. Noisebridge) and mainland Europe; the Make and Makerfaire events and publications developed by the O’Reilly publishing group; and an existing eco-system of digital technology communities and meet-ups to tap into. Key events acknowledged by a number of these spaces include the founding of the London Hackspace in early 2009 and the first UK Mini MakerFaire which took place in Newcastle in March 2009.
Founded in early 2009, this hackspace emerged at the early end of this wave which led to, by November 2014, an estimated 97 Makerspaces (comprising a wide range of activities) being founded across the UK. As research from NESTA indicates, the majority of these were supported through membership models; however, some also drew in seed funding and support from local and national government bodies and (as detailed in other SIIs for this part of the TRANSIT work). As legibility around hackspaces and ‘making’ became more prevalent, the interviewees perceived that large amounts of funding and support became available for these types of organisations. The organisations described above were able to take advantage of these shifts – Makerversity, a combined co-working space and machine shop was founded in London in 2013, when the founders were given the opportunity of renovating 2000 square metres of disused space in the lower floors of Somerset House. Building BloQs is a membership-based workshop space, also in London, which was founded in 2012. In January 2016 it received £1.35 million from the London Regeneration Fund. These types of resources were those which this hackspace’s directors felt could have been available to them, had they been more focused.
The second event which shaped this CTP was the types of funding available to support local enterprise in certain regions in the North of England. The directors described how certain forms of funding were available for start-ups in the city itself; and for social innovation initiatives in the regions which were available to more economically deprived regions:
“A [small, regional] hackspace have been supported by their local council who have given them someone to work with and I’m like ‘Why don’t we have that? That would be really nice if that happened!’. But then you see the schemes for start-ups in the city which is really badly organised getting £4 million, I think we should have done that instead.”
As this quote illustrates, the organisation was limited in the types of public funding were available to it – not the large sums taken up by London spaces, nor the support funds available to smaller, more rural and deprived spaces.
This CTP was shaped by the emergence of hackspaces and similar grassroots innovation initiatives around machine shops which emerged in the late 2000s in the UK; and the support for local enterprise in certain regions of the North of England.
The directors described their frustrations with this CTP, but acknowledged that it had been formed by the challenges of returning the organisation to a stable financial footing (as described in previous CTPs). The issue which one described was not that the organisation was doing poorly in financial terms at the time of interview, but the potential that it had lost: “We’re in the position now that we should have been a couple of years ago. It’s not about the income, although the income shows you’re doing well. But there were so many opportunities that we lost”.
This CTP was somewhat anticipated. As described above, much of the co-founders time and energy had been put into keeping the organisation afloat and taking advantage of strategic funding opportunities, rather than taking on large and transformational works:
“I realised that we’d focused so much on getting the business right as it was suffering from loads of problems, that we’ve been looking inwards. In that time, people have set up other things and done really well, but that could have been us”.
The elements around regional funding and talent were also anticipated, inasmuch as the directors were aware of who they were able to work with, and the limits of their own financial resources for developing expertise:
“It’s easier to find good people in London. We benefit from Guardian [newspaper] courses people who boost our frontline course provision. We’ve done lots of stuff with people in London and we’re a really good brand, but there are just lots of things that haven’t been developed as much because we don’t have expertise, or if you do have expertise, the people who are really fucking good at what they do charge a lot of money – the in-demand developers or in-demand community people charge £300 a day; and that’s what we want to pay people a week. We could have done more but geography is kyboshing us. We’re always really busy but we could have done more because we were ahead of other people, and I don’t think we were in a position to capitalise on it – not necessarily financially, but just to move on it. We don’t have enough resources, we’re too busy, and we’ve had all the internal stuff to deal with too”.
As the quote above indicates, in the absence of the events leading up to this CTP, the organisation may have been in a financially stronger position and able to take a stronger leadership role in the wider UK maker movement.
This CTP permitted the directors to learn about the limits in their current strategies, but also to identify which strengths and resiliencies they had both intentionally and inadvertently developed as a response to these limitations:
“We may have missed a trick [around financing] but having said that, we have a model which isn’t wholly dependent on funding. We work really hard to make sure that the wheels don’t fall off. Places like Makerversity focus on businesses and start-ups straight up. We’ve found ourselves looking at people who are disadvantaged, a bit forgotten. Start-ups are the order of the day [in this city] which is fine, but that’s not necessarily where I think things should be going. If you help people who are already alright, then what about the individuals and small groups who aren’t?”
As this CTP identifies, these activities helped the organisation to reshape its transformational aims through circumstance – building a stronger local network with more disadvantaged groups than might otherwise have happened. As the directors observed, it was difficult to determine or quantify what socio-economic benefits these had created over the longer term, but had observed impact happening:
“I know we’ve been getting people into jobs as a by-product of what we do. It’s really hard to measure what the socio-economic impact has been – I know we need to get more tools in to measure this stuff. People come in who have ambition, do stuff, get headhunted. Other people come in who wouldn’t say ‘boo’ to a goose, headhunted by companies after a year because they become really engaged and passionate. Some people become companies. So I put the argument forward that we’re enabling people to do what they do well. It’s not like we’re going to train people to do specific things – we’ve enabled people to do what they want to do, so they have their own agency. Then they make the changes themselves so it has wider community benefits”.
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