by Anna Patton, resident storyteller at Impact Hub Brixton
Could underused areas of Brixton help ease the squeeze on affordable workspace?
That’s the question that Architecture 00, Camden Collective, and our very own Impact Hub Brixton have been exploring over the past three months. Working with 70 stakeholders, including 25 local businesses, they have mapped out needs and identified at least three spaces with potential (read more on the project site: Brixton Works).
The research is part of a feasibility study, funded by Lambeth Council, that also aims to figure out what kind of entity could manage the provision of affordable workspace in future. The council has committed to investing £200,000 in spaces for small and growing businesses — but where might that be spent? Tim Ahrensbach, project manager at Architecture 00 (and a co-founder of Impact Hub Westminster), tells us more.
Excited about the potential of concrete: Tim Ahrensbach
Who will Brixton Works benefit?
Workspaces here are being very quickly converted into residential spaces, and there are lots of high street shops, but there isn’t necessarily retail space for experimentation. The ambition of Brixton Works is to create affordable space at the entry level, for people to start a business or try things out.
The Impact Hub is very desktop-based, but could you imagine the same for food and beverages, for example with shared kitchen facilities? Or for a crafts and artists space — shared tool shops and that kind of thing? Or creative ways of doing retail? That’s the ambition we want to explore.
What have you learned from your consultations so far?
One realisation was that it’s not just about provision of space. For instance, for lots of food people we’ve talked to, it’s not just about access to a shared kitchen, although flexibility is a massive issue: even in Brixton market you’re having to sign up to at least a year’s lease, and people can’t afford that upfront investment. Even more so, though, it’s about a supportive community and learning. In the case of food, there’s so much you have to be aware of in terms of liability and standards. A lot of people don’t know what these are and the onus is on you to find out.
So whatever we propose needs to incorporate the provision of flexible, cheap space, with a ‘programming’ element — providing community events and learning.
I’m also always surprised by the amount of things people do to make things work. For a lot of the makers, artisans, or designers the majority of income doesn’t come from selling their products, it comes from giving workshops, or even if they have a shop, a lot of income comes from going to markets, and they use their shop also for production. So how do we create spaces that allow a business to deliver workshops? Not every baker, for example, needs their own workshop table, but can we create a shared facility?
So what stage is the project at now?
The community farm at the Loughborough Junction site
We’ve identified three specific sites. The Brixton Rec has about 12,000 sq. ft of storage space which is completely empty. It has no natural light and is all concrete, but could you do things like storage, which would free up space in, say, the markets? Or what about media and recording studios?
The second is the Loughborough Junction site. There’s a community farm on the site at the moment and the council just got funding to do an exciting ‘light industry meets community farming meets makerspace’ kind of concept. Could there be a shared kitchen facility, again with a community around it, linked with the existing U.Lab food incubator programme in Brixton? Or a professional makerspace?
The last space we’re looking at is potentially opening up arches that aren’t being used and doing something with retail, but in a different way — shared retail space for instance.
What’s happening on 30th March? Who should come along?
We know what sites are available and generally what opportunities are available, but let’s try to go into more detail: what, who would we work with, who’s interested in this, who will take ownership of it, who would lead it for each individual site. Hopefully by the end of it we’ll have a handful of proposals that we can put forward to the steering group.
We want as many different types of people as possible! People who want to discuss the proposals and make them possible… but also those just really keen on seeing how we create diverse and affordable workspace, but are not necessarily wedded to a particular idea. And lastly, anyone who lives or works in Brixton who is interested, or is interested in how these projects could generate wider impact in the community.
What excites you most about this project?
People say there’s just no free workspace in Brixton. Medium-sized business are struggling: you need to hire 10 people but you can’t afford a commercial site for that difficult 2-year growing period. That’s a really big challenge which we can’t necessarily deal with on this scale — but [it’s exciting to] think even more creatively about how to provide workspace.
Whenever we talked to people about storage space in the Rec, they weren’t necessarily imagining that that would be the first thing we’d do — people were thinking about something a bit more glamorous! But if that enables you to free up 20% of space across the whole market, that’s tonnes of space that could be used. That’s an amazing opportunity.
What do you think will be the biggest challenges?
On a practical level, one is getting access to the sites. The bigger challenge is that the money that’s been allocated [by the council] is only capital investment, but there’s no money for running it, for community development, putting on events and activities. That would have to happen in close partnership with local stakeholders. The question becomes: are we able to galvanise enough local stakeholders around an idea, so that people will co-invest — not just financially, but also their time, their resources, and whatever else is needed?
Want to get involved in designing Brixton’s affordable workspace of the future? Register for the workshop on Wed 30th March here. To read more about the project to date, see Brixton Works.
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