Sally Taylor visited a coworking space and community centre in Balsall Health looking for snippets of gold dust to bring back to help us develop the plans for Bearwood Community Hub together. There was much more than a few snippets - what an awesome building!
When I arrived at the Old Print Works coworking space I felt like I’d walked into a welcoming home - so comfortable, bright, ‘lived in’ and stylish too. It was so different to the really high spec co-working spaces I’ve been to, and in a really, really good way. Patrick and Hannah, for whom the Old Print works is a real labour of love, made me a cuppa and we sat down to chat about how they were making it work, what the Old Print Works is enabling, and how it’s about making sure that a really beautiful building in the heart of a vibrant community is looked after so it can be a space for that community to congregate, create things and make good stuff happen locally.
And that’s just what I saw. Co-working members getting on with their small businesses in a super-affordable workspace. Craft and maker workshops set up all over the sprawling building. A massive sewing workshop, where Jutta Stahlhack was running a drop in sewing and craft group. Small businesses run from their own dedicated office units. A beautiful, homely cafe. A high end couture business. A massive yoga studio. A ‘town hall’ type space for community meetings and evening events. [Author’s note to self: talk just a fraction less and take some more photos!!]
What struck me was that the building has been repurposed to be whatever is needed locally. The room hire, offices and coworking space help to keep it going (but maintenance is still a huge burden), but the breadth of activities that happen at the Old Print Works are there because Hannah, Patrick and their predecessors started with an open mind. They see the spaces as a platform to enable anybody to get good stuff going. This is the way we’ve thought about potential of Bearwood Community Hub from the very start and it’s so inspiring to see it happen. When you create or revive a space you have the potential to create an important community resource, but to do that you need ensure that it’s open and available to anybody who wants to use it for productive, charitable or collaborative purposes. Just like Hannah and Patrick have done.
Patrick and Hannah explained that the Old Print Works is not without its challenges - they decided to make it work purely through earned income and investment rather than public funding and that is a huge pressure. They also gave me little tips to bring back to Bearwood and our business plan. Like it’s great to have a ‘Just Say Yes’ approach (an approach I would favour and that Gather Dudley have always prioritised), but make sure there’s a fixed review period so that if something isn’t working too well, you can easily and fairly make the space available to others in the community.
They also opened up about the different models of working that it’s worth thinking about. Some services they have set up a tendering process for (such as as the cafe), to make sure they get partners who have the same values as the Old Print Works organisation - community and social change. For other things they’ve majored on publicity to get the message out and bring people in. In other ways they’ve simply been responsive to what people in the Balsall Heath are have wanted to set up for themselves.
They also suggested we go and find out about the Springfield project - a local church renovation project which is now a partner with the NHS for social prescribing (where GPs can ‘prescribe’ or refer patients to community projects that can improve their physical or mental health"). And just over the road from the Old Print Works is Moseley Road Baths, now a community run swimming centre saved from closure by local people. So much inspiration to draw on and think about. We have few more visits in the pipeline and will be sure to post here so that everyone has access to the learning and inspiring stories. If you’d like to join us on a visit please get in touch! hello@bearwood.cc.
