Co-working spaces in churches
By Peter Smith | 4 min read
In this blog, Peter Smith explains how underused spaces in churches can become co-working spaces to benefit the church and the community.
It is common knowledge that the pandemic has contributed to a major shift in work patterns, with more flexible, ‘hybrid’ working increasingly the norm along with a massive acceleration in the use of technology.
Equally, issues around mental health and wellbeing, exacerbated by the isolation and stress of the past two years, have become important concerns for employers and employees alike. People recognise the importance of in-person meetings and face-to-face connection.
Add to this the increased emphasis on developing eco-friendly lifestyles to combat climate change and the need to reduce the city commute, then the provision of a local work environment offers a positive way to help working people both to save on travel time and costs and to reduce carbon emissions.
For churches, the struggle to reopen after the pandemic has been complicated by financial issues (particularly rising fuel costs) and the impact of Covid on volunteer numbers has made any new initiative hard to contemplate. It is fair to say that reconnecting with the local community is proving difficult, with many outside the church finding it hard to see how the church is relevant to their lives.
Pop-up, Co-working Spaces in Churches
But just imagine, for a moment, that your local church could provide the means to meet three community needs in a single initiative:
Addressing isolation and loneliness with a place of wellbeing and connection for working people in their local neighbourhood
Addressing changing work patterns with a professionally-run, local, eco-friendly, pop-up workspace
Addressing church financial issues, with a new revenue stream from previously unused church space, run by volunteers who can find purposeful work there
Sounds good, doesn’t it?
The great news is that this has already been piloted successfully and there is a working model for it.
The Business Friends Club is that working model, run by Augment Partnership CIC, our social enterprise. The pilot co-working space operated one day a week for six months right up to March 2020 in a church in Skipton, North Yorkshire. It brought together a collection of working individuals looking for a local place to work where they could meet others with a similar interest in business. From a church venue perspective, we aimed quite high (so it was warm, carpeted, with good wi-fi, well equipped kitchen and decent loos) and we gave it a conference-standard presentation, with welcoming hosts, bookable work spaces, contactless payment arrangements, prayer for the day, bottomless tea and coffee and some great cake (and the occasional breakfast). The host provides the friendly welcome, manages the hospitality, demonstrates support for every member in a non-judgmental, authentic and caring way and (by doing their own work) models a Christian business ethos.
We discovered that the demand profile was wide and various: we had work-from-home employees, business consultants, charity administrators, start-up entrepreneurs, researchers, job-seekers and even clergy, but we soon recognised that it would equally suit academics, web designers, writers and bloggers, business executives, charity CEOs, online salespeople, students, part-time employees and many others.
As an individual project it worked really well, but just as we started to roll it out as a social franchise, Coronavirus and lockdown stopped it in its tracks in 2020.
Our vision for a national network
Fast forward to 2022 and we are now running a full-time co-working space in Skipton and we are keen to find churches across the UK interested in working with us. We would love to expand this project nationwide and open more pop-up co-working spaces in churches.
We believe the model works well for both churches and communities. If you are a church with spare space (e.g. an underused hall) and are interested in exploring this opportunity with us, please do get in touch. Your church would need a suitable space and facilities, one or two volunteer hosts to manage the weekly sessions and an interest in serving your local community.
Our desire is to help individuals to grow and communities to thrive, and together we can help to bring faith into the workplace by bringing workspaces into the church.
Peter Smith is Director of Augment Partnership CIC, a social enterprise based in Yorkshire. As a Chartered Surveyor for over 30 years, Peter has long been interested in how church assets can be used to serve their community better. Now, having set up a social enterprise helping individuals grow and communities thrive, Augment Partnership CIC currently runs full-time coworking for individuals and community organisations as Augment Community Workspace in Skipton, the gateway to the Yorkshire Dales.