Web Worker Daily

The North of England seems to be a hotbed of coworking with not only major cities such as Manchester and Leeds hosting multiple, vibrant coworking communities, but smaller towns such as Huddersfield and Bradford now beginning to enter the field. Options are available for web workers and freelancers wishing to enjoy the flexibility and community spirit of coworking.

Huddersfield is a curious place – an old market town of just under 150′000 people, about halfway between regional hubs, Leeds and Manchester, yet a nascent hub of creative and digital talent. Recent years have seen an infusion of public money in creating a ‘digital quarter‘ for the city, as well as the local university’s school of computing taking a lead in promoting crossover between creative and computing subject areas. Now the city is set to launch not one, but two coworking communities.

The first – tentatively known as the Media Lounge – will be operated by the town’s Media Centre creative hub and set to be launched this month as an alternative to their existing serviced offices. The Media Centre is looking to provide thirty hotdesks on an hourly pay-as-you-go-basis, bundled with access to business support, ‘front desk’, mentoring and IT support services. The providers are specifically targetting graduates of nearby universities wishing to startup, as well as digital nomads, homeworkers and entrepreneurs.

The second – BASE space – is an offshoot of BASE, a collective of artists, companies, designers and technologists based in the city. The town’s post-industrial heritage has left it with an abundance of vacant factories and textile mills many of which are being repurposed and refurbished as loft apartments and – in this case – a wonderfully rustic and sophisticated space for web workers. I recently attended an afternoon of technology talks – We ♥ Technology – at Bates Mill, the home of BASE space, finding it to have a great airy atmosphere, populated with some very smart and lovely people :) BASE are also going after artists, bloggers, designers, hackers and coders, offering a £100/month package for a hotdesk, wifi, secure locker, conference rooms, games and, crucially, 24/7 access.

With Old Broadcasting House firmly established across the Pennines in Leeds, and Manchester playing host to both OpenSpace and Fly The Coop, the east-west M62 corridor across Northern England seems to be leading the way for coworking in the UK. A fitting embrace of digital culture and the future for a region that was the Silicon Valley of the Industrial Revolution.