Manchester Creative Co-working Space

A drop-in centre for freelancer's from Manchester's creative industries to provide tools, facilities and companionship.

Submitted by paulfabretti.

I would use the money to set up and maintain a co-working office in my home town of Manchester (UK). Eventually the site would be self-funding and even grow to other areas of the city.

Manchester has a thriving, talented creative industry, made up of lots of mid-small sized agencies and production companies who rely on the services of an ever-growing army of digital nomads/freelancers to get by.

So the freelancers move from job to job sometimes office based, largely home based but aren't ideas best generated when they are banded around and brainstormed with others? Aren't problems shared, problems halved?

How can the freelancer enjoy the freedom of working for him/herself yet benefit from the stimulation of other like-minded people?

Currently there are a few meet-ups occasionally put on by those who want more contact, but I don’t think these occasional meet-ups are necessarily conducive to ongoing idea inspiration, development or problem-solving – innovation basically.

A Low-Cost Creative and Technical Community Centre - My goal would be to create a drop-in shop for these people. Create a “creative community centre” so to speak.

Give them the kind of low-cost working environment in which they and their ideas could thrive – spare bedrooms and shoebox offices only appeal for a small amount of time!

Community members (of whatever level) could come to the space to work and, at a turn of a chair ask for a coding problem to be solved, an idea to be sense-checked and an API to be recommended, a potential new client to be tapped...

The space could also be used for community events – geek-ups, social media cafe’s, etc etc. giving the various creative communities somewhere they can call and make their own or in fact a location to (cheaply) showcase their work.

Community-Generated Employment - Peer-to-Peer technical/creative help aside, the community can help itself too. It is frequently the case that freelancers take on or are involved in a project that requires more skills/time than they alone can handle. Mates can help (sometimes), but what if the community could recommend or commission work to the people at the co-working space? Capacity, skills and awareness of work out there is in abundance.

A Talent Pool - Unless agencies are very well connected, they frequently find it difficult to find the right freelancer available at the right time for the right price. Having an ongoing, growing “register” of freelancers, free from recruitment fees ensures the agencies can have a wider pool of talent from which to draw.

Amount Applied For: 40.00

Share This Page:

Comments