We’re incredibly excited to announce the launch of our latest project, The 3Space Wimbledon Business Hub! Unlocking underutilised government space at Connect House in Wimbledon, Greater London, the new incubator hub offers early stage charities, social enterprises and start-up businesses a unique, flexible, environmentally and socially responsible space from which to conduct their activities. However, this is not your normal short term office, or hot-desking facility! The Wimbledon hub differs from our other 3Space hubs, as we will also provide users with access to dedicated business support offered in partnership with the Merton Chamber of Commerce, a not for profit organisation and social enterprise working to protect and develop the interests of the business community in the London Borough of Merton.

The aim of the ‘Government Office Space for Start-up Businesses’ initiative is to encourage start-up businesses to make the transition from bedroom/house to their first ‘nursery’ office space. We’re pleased to be working with BIS and the DVLA to help enable this by using its stock of surplus unoccupied office space as ‘nursery’ space, or Supported Start-up Business Space, drawing upon incubator models.

The 8-month project, running from May to December 2013, will provide non-profits and start-ups with a new kind of supported workspace environment, as well as an opportunity to collaborate with local partners for the benefit of the community. The space itself is situated just 2 minutes walk from Wimbledon Rail and Underground station, and users will enjoy fully serviced, bright and airy office space – the perfect environment for anyone in the early stages of running their business, while benefitting from tailored business support provided by the Merton Chamber of Commerce.

For more information, please see our Wimbledon Business Hub property page, and if you would like to find out more about how you can apply to use the space, please get in touch with the 3Space team via info@3space.org or 0207 060 3168

By Alice

The 3Space team are no strangers to travelling far and wide, as we visit our spaces across the UK we’ve certainly racked up the miles between us! But the past couple of months have been especially exciting for us, as team members have had the opportunity to visit San Francisco not once, but twice!

3Space founders Andrew and Henry recently returned from MESH 2013 - a global gathering of entrepreneurs, planners, designers and instigators working within the sharing economy – a fantastic opportunity for 3Space to meet and share ideas with some incredibly exciting organisations.

This weekend it’s my turn to dig out my passport, as I head to San Francisco for the LLGA ‘Cities Pilot The Future’ conference. Not only will this be a fantastic chance to meet like-minded organisations from around the world, but it’s doubly exciting as we’ve been shortlisted for one of the LLGA2013 Awards! The LLGA scheme is an innovative global competition, which sees 22 cities from around the world present their call for specific solutions to improve their cities. 5 solutions are shortlisted for each city, and after the winner is announced at the conference in San Francisco, they are able to bring their solutions to life through a real pilot scheme in the city.

This year, the city of Barcelona put out a call to find solutions to help revitalise neighbourhoods by creating opportunities for economic growth and employment, while the call from the nearby city of Sant Cugat looked for ways of generating economic and social value by capitalising on the city’s underused spaces. We were thrilled to be shortlisted for both of these calls, and I can’t wait to hear from the other shortlisted organisations and the cities themselves at the conference next week.

Being shortlisted for both the Barcelona and Sant Cugat calls led me to dig a little deeper and find out more about the problems facing Spanish high streets and town centres, and to see how they compare with the issues that we’ve been experiencing in the UK. Since the 2008 global financial crisis and the resulting crash in the Spanish property market, retail sales have continued to fall. It was reported in January 2013 that Spain’s retail sales have fallen for the 30th month in a row as the nation continues to suffer from a deep recession and high unemployment, which currently stands at roughly 26% overall, with joblessness among young people topping 55%. This figure, the highest since the mid-1970s, follows Spain’s prolonged recession and deep spending cuts – it’s clear that the declining use of our high streets here in the UK is not an isolated problem.

To pilot a 3Space project in one of these cities would be an incredibly exciting challenge for us, acting as a fantastic way for us to see how our model could work outside of the UK, and more importantly, to explore more new ways that reactivation of vacant spaces can be used to address other social issues such as youth unemployment.

The winners of each call will be announced next Tuesday 14th May – keep up to date and check our Twitter feed for live updates from LLGA 2013!

By Alice

I was lucky enough to spend the latter half of last week at 3Space’s Re:THINK Festival, taking part in a dizzying array of talks, workshops and art-events. From workshops on how to run a creative pop-up to detailed discussions about the potentials of business rates there were a huge range of ideas up for analysis.

Whilst it was great to dip in and out of the diverse projects presented, I was especially interested in trying to explore the commonalities between the various events and talks. I wanted to see if I could identify a common-denominator which might shed light on some of the sentiments of pop-up.

In looking for this common-denominator, what struck me most was how many of the groups at Re:THINK emphasised the importance of adapting to the particular place they found themselves in.

Platform 65, an arts company by Singaporeans in London, spoke about how art can respond in site-specific ways, using the space as the brief to work from. Engineers Without Borders stressed the importance of training engineers to consider the social and political contexts of infrastructural developments. Phillippa Banister from Sustrans discussed the need to negotiate the realities of community and council objectives when tackling street design and Dan Gregory (Commoncapital.org.uk) suggested that the benefits and perils of discretionary business rates relief depend entirely on the context of a local area.

So – from these very different projects and perspectives at Re:THINK I took a common message which I think does reflect something of the spirit of pop-up.

That message goes something like this:

One of the most constructive things which pop-up can teach us is the paramount importance of responding flexibly to the spaces one works in, of getting to know neighbours, of treating idiosyncrasies as opportunities not set-backs and of creating something which responds to rather than over-writes the space it uses. Answers to urban issues should not be based on abstract principles but should be properly attuned to the context they’re popping-up in. Working in this way, we can move towards a city where more voices are heard and included.

Geographers like to distinguish between Space and Place. The first, Space, refers to the abstract, to the physical co-ordinates which make up any area. The second, on the other hand, Place, is more to do with the meanings that people invest somewhere and the social relations which certain locales create. Pop-up, then seems to be attentive to Places, not just Spaces, and the Re:THINK festival was a great showcase of the myriad ways in which charitable and creative groups are responding to place at the moment.

By Ella Harris

Ella Harris has spent the past two years researching and writing about pop-ups, and is due to start her PhD in Cultural Geography at Royal Holloway this autumn.  She also blogs about pop-up cinema over at A Nos Amours and can be found on Twitter @EllaRSH.

Photo credit: Snapaway Photography

Three reasons to smile this weekend: not only is the weather warming up and the sun starting to shine just that little bit more brightly, but 3Space Re:THINK is drawing closer too! From 1st-3rd May, our new Blackfriars community hub is set to be transformed into an interactive playground for Re:THINKing the way we use our cities and resources.

The 3Space team have been busy putting the final touches to the festival line-up which is set to include exhibitions, interactive displays, workshops, talks and discussions, panels and parties, all of which are designed to get you and your organisation exploring, promoting and celebrating new ideas for the ways that we interact with our environment.

The full schedule will be online next week, but for now, here’s a sneak-peak into some of the fantastic events you can expect from the 1st to 3rd May:

Movement for Liveable London present their “20mph Masterclass“, a workshop exploring the benefits of rolling out a 20mph speed limit on roads across London.

Scratchadelia have curated their newest ‘blind’ art exhibition exclusively for our Blackfriars hub, inviting visitors to rethink how they connect with spaces and art as a sensory experience.

The Restart Project are set to host one of their increasingly popular “Restart parties”, bringing together tech-savvy volunteers and members of the public with forgotten electronics for an evening of fun and fixing.  Watch this video to find out more.

21 Artists have travelled across the Atlantic to bring their hugely successful Chicago-based art project to London, for 21 days of live art as part of the Re:THINK festival.

This Big City will be offering a brilliant hands-on “Urban Design for Dummies” workshop for city-planning enthusiasts (or, more accurately, anyone who’s just interested in why cities look the way they do)!

Other participants and partners include Secret Cinema, We Are Pop Up, Grow Up, Cultivate London, Journal of Wild Culture, Spacehive, Dot Dot Dot Property, as well as lots more still to be announced.

Entry to the majority of these events will be FREE, and we’ll be releasing tickets and the full schedule of the festival next week – keep an eye on our Re:THINK website or RSVP to our Re:THINK Facebook event for the latest updates!

By Rozi

There is no denying that the sustainable city movement has taken London by storm: urban growing and farming, buying locally, upcycling and repair shops, bicycles swarming the streets and powering cinemas, the umpteen uses found for shipping containers and fridges, and of course, making use of otherwise empty spaces – the list goes on.

Here at 3Space, we thought it was about time to celebrate these innovative ideas and to explore just how simple and fun it is to be re:sourceful, re:use and re:duce waste – so…

From 1st to 3rd May 3Space Blackfriars will be transformed to host a 3-day festival re:THINKing the use of our cities’ resources.

The event will be a fantastic opportunity to experiment, promote and collaborate and we would like to invite YOU to get involved. For more information please click here.

If you are interested in running or participating in a workshop, exhibition, event, talk and/or debate please contact Megan on megan@3space.org by 29th March 2013.

The more the merrier, so please spread the word, and be sure to keep an eye on http://3spacerethink.org for updates!

By Megan

We’re a small team here at 3Space, which makes it even more exciting that we were successful with both of the applicants we put forward to take part in the Vodafone World of Difference programme! Starting from next month, we will have 2 shiny new interns, both of whom join us with an exciting background which we think makes them the perfect addition to the 3Space Team.

Megan Bellamy will be starting at 3Space in March, working with the team to develop and implement an exciting new project, the details of which will be revealed in the coming months! After taking the Graduate Diploma in Law at BPP Law School, and having previously graduated from Durham University with a BA in Geography and completing a Foundation Course at Chelsea College of Art and Design, Megan spent a few years working in the arts law field. She is now combining her interests in environmental sustainability, the arts and tackling social needs. Megan has significant experience in curating events that utilise empty space, such as FoodCycle’s A Good Meal and the Durham Arts Festival, as well as having worked on a number of other charitable and environmental projects.

Megan says: “I enjoy working with others to generate and implement innovative ideas on how we can lead more sustainable lives. For example, our society is extremely wasteful. This is a problem 3Space addresses through facilitating the temporary use of empty space, space that would otherwise go unused, for the benefit of the community.   I will also be experimenting with creative ways of making the most out of space people already have, from windows to walls.  The 3Space team is already leading by example with their Blackfriars indoor planting initiative; a fantastic way to help people become more self-sufficient by joining the urban growing movement!”

During her time at 3Space Megan will combine her experience and interests in meanwhile use, addressing social needs, environmental sustainability and the arts to curate an event that will raise awareness of London’s empty space, demonstrate and enable more effective use of such spaces, and engage and action the London community to do so on an ongoing basis. Megan aims to educate others as to the fun that can be had, the benefits of such a mindset and, in doing so, help people become more resourceful.

We’re really looking forward to working with Megan over the coming months in our new Blackfriars unit. To follow Megan’s progress, please check out her World of Difference blog.

Lizzie Bird will be working with the team later on in the summer, as she works towards completing a Masters in Urban Design at Newcastle University. Since finishing her Town Planning degree at Newcastle University, Lizzie has worked as a planner in London and on community arts projects in the North East.  Lizzie has also volunteered with Raleigh International in Borneo. While at 3Space, will be looking at how temporary use of empty spaces can act as a catalyst for regeneration.

Lizzie says: “I‘m really excited to be joining the 3Space team as part of the Vodafone World of Difference Programme.  Working at 3Space will be a great opportunity to understand more about how temporary use and pop-ups can shape the future of towns and cities.  Coming from an urban planning and regeneration background, I’ve always been really interested in understanding the relationship between people and places.  After hearing about 3Space taking on the challenge of vacant buildings, making it possible for other charities to temporarily use empty spaces, I really wanted to get involved!  

Through my Vodafone World of Difference placement at 3Space I’m planning to record the impact of 3Space’s temporary use projects have on towns and cities.  I plan to use different methods (including interviews, mapping, diagramming, group discussions, photography and video) to record the impact of a range of temporary use projects on both the groups involved and spaces occupied.”   

You can keep up with Lizzie’s work by visiting her blog.

Many thanks to the Vodafone Foundation, without which 3Space would be unable to host these brilliant interns. We’re really looking forward to working with Megan and Lizzie over the coming months, so watch this space to see their projects as they develop!

By Alice

In just 6 weeks, 3Space Blackfriars has gone from a huge empty shell on the banks of the River Thames to a vibrant hub of non-profit activity.  We’ve gone from welcoming a few organisations using rooms as office space to having a regular roster of fantastic users filling the building with everything from creative theatre rehearsals to yoga classes.  And in the coming months, we only expect things to get more exciting!

Some of the organisations currently using the hub on a regular basis include:

Food Cycle, who previously used our Old Street hub for a pop-up restaurant in 2011, have made Blackfriars their operational home for the next few months, making great use of some of the space on the third floor.
Act for Change are a youth development charity working in schools and local communities and are using the hub as primary office space.
Engineers Without Borders UK were the first non-profit to move in to Blackfriars back in January, putting several rooms on the fourth floor to good use as an interim office until they move to a new premises later this year.
Ferodo Bridges is a creative performance art CIC whose members are amongst our most regular users.  They use a number of rooms in our Blackfriars hub as rehearsal space.
Advocates for Human Dignity are a human rights charity running ‘direct advocate projects’ alongside international NGOs and use the community hub for desk and office space.
My Support Broker, a non-profit offering personal support and advice services, are putting several rooms on the first floor to good use.
Pod Academy are a charity producing free podcasts on the latest academic research in a number of fields from arts, humanities and social sciences to business, economics and the environment. They currently use Blackfriars as their primary office space.

We’ve also had events from the likes of IRMO (Indoamerican Refugee Migrant Organisation) who have used the large ground floor meeting room (known as ‘The Library’) for training sessions; The Pink Singers, a long-established LGBT community choir who have also used The Library for rehearsals; and Urbananda Yoga, a donation based yoga class taking place once a week in one of the building’s large court room spaces, with all the proceeds from classes going to a selection of worthy charities.

As for ourselves here at 3Space, we’ve been taking this opportunity to branch out with regards to what we can offer as part of our spaces.  With so many communal areas here at Blackfriars, we’ve begun indoor planting initiatives, sowing seeds for herb gardens in the foyer and offices, with a view to expanding our green-fingered activities in the coming months.  In particular, we’re looking to collaborate with any organisations interested in indoor growing, from flowers and trees to living walls, and while outside space here is limited, we want to make the hub as green as possible.  If you’re interested, please get in touch by emailing rozi@3space.org.

We’ve also got a number of other exciting projects in the works for the coming months that we can’t wait to reveal, so watch this space.  You can also keep up to date with our progress on Twitter, Facebook and on our dedicated 3Space Blackfriars blog – find it here.

By Rozi

At 3Space we are always on the lookout for interesting projects- especially when they involve both community engagement and creative use of space. Here are a few that are catching our eye right now:

FARM:shop - These guys have transformed an empty high street shop (some of their produce shown above!) into an urban farm, with the aim of growing as much food as sustainably possible. Using eco-social design, they have created a hub that acts as workspace, café and events venue. This environmentally and commercially responsible project teaches visitors about the future of food in the company of rooftop chicken coops, indoor allotments and a ‘microponic’ fish farm.

Cohousing is really starting to take off in the UK. LILAC (Low Impact Living Affordable Community) shown above, is one of the leaders in this scene- an affordable, ecological and co-operative housing project that is creating 20 homes in Leeds. Using a site that has been empty for the past five years, they are all about community and sustainability.

Clear Village, shown above, are a charity that helps people engage with one another and get practical things done. Recently, they have facilitated the regeneration of a garden in Havering, London. This involved bringing local people and organisations together in order to revitalise a part of the borough that had become derelict.

For more awesome projects and to catch up with our newest London Hub, check our new tumblr here.

If you know of (or better yet, are involved with!) an innovative community project, let us know by emailing Ella or replying in the comments below.

By Ella

In recent years, Future Cinema have cemented themselves as one of the most exciting cultural organisations on our radar. An innovative live events company that ‘brings film to life’, Future Cinema fuse classic and cult films with art, music and performance to create a truly unique cinematic experience. Sourcing unique, often vacant properties in which to set these performances, we’ve been inspired by the ways that the audience are totally immersed in the film’s environment through clever use of props and scenery, music, performance and live actors, which create an entirely new and exciting way to experience film.

The 3Space team jumped at the chance to visit Secret Cinema’s latest offering, The Shawshank Redemption. We were bundled through a court hearing, across Bethnal Green in an original 1940s bus and into ‘prison’ at the beautiful former Cardinal Pole lower school in Hackney. The environment fit the story perfectly, and with the addition of some terrifying guards, trouble-maker prisoners and our very own prison uniforms, we were let loose on the State of Oakhampton Jail.

Over 13,500 ‘prisoners’ have been part of Future Cinema’s Shawshank Redemption so far, and with tickets selling out in hours for their most recent productions it’s clear that the experiences that they’re creating have a broader appeal than those simply looking for something unique. With each production, Future Cinema have created a spectacle in an age of downloads and cinema chains, using re-imagined space to create an immersive experience which other pop-up and temporary projects should aspire to. We’re looking forward to seeing the spaces they find and how they are transformed for their future projects!

By Alice

Photo from the Future Cinema Facebook page 

A new year brings an exciting new challenge for the 3Space team in the form of our fantastic new building in Blackfriars,  London. We’ve been spending the last few weeks cleaning and cleaning, mapping and organising this HUGE new space, and making sure it’s ready for all of the exciting projects we’ve got lined up for the next 6 months.

We’ve set up a special blog for the space, so that you can keep track of all the developments as the space changes and hosts some awesome projects – check it out now at http://3spaceblackfriars.tumblr.com/

If you fancy popping over to see our new space then it’d be great to see you! Whether you’re interested in using some office or events space, or if you’d just like to find out more about what we do over a cup of tea then please drop us an email to info@3space.org – we’d love to hear from you!

By Alice