The Manchester Upset, The Original Meaning of Coworking, and Taking the Armour Off

So, Reader, I’ve been living out of a bag all last week.

London. Unreasonable Connection at the Blue Garage. The Workspace Design Show London with the Urban MBA crew. Friends. Family. Constantly moving.

My head’s full. Conversations and ideas are still spinning. I’m still getting them down on paper.

Normally, I write you a thousand-word deep dive. This week I’m keeping it tight.

Scroll down for details for the next Unreasonable Connection Live! @ SPACE4 May 19th!

The Manchester Upset and What It Means

I’ve been a Green Party member since 2014. Last week we won a massive by-election in Manchester, beating both Labour and Reform.

Why?

Keir Starmer’s central office cock-blocked Andy Burnham from running. They tried to manage the local outcome from the top down.

The locals rebelled.

Zack Polanski wrote yesterday: “That didn’t happen because of luck. It happened because thousands of you showed up... We know how to organise. Now we need to turn that energy outward.”

Burnham himself has been writing about the need for a “participatory society.” The political class is slowly realising you can’t just deliver services to people from on high anymore.

(Three months ago, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority launched the ‘Greater Manchester Participation Playbook’)

People are demanding the right to participate in building their own neighbourhoods.

This isn’t just politics. It’s exactly what’s happening in the way we work and gather.

Coworking Was Always a Verb

Bernard DeKoven coined the word “coworking” in 1999.

Not Brad Neuberg, I’m sure he is lovely. Not the San Francisco tech bros. A game designer.

DeKoven wasn’t talking about real estate. He wasn’t talking about renting desks.

He described coworking as a verb. The act of working together as equals.

It was social technology to break down the top-down hierarchies of the traditional office. DeKoven saw that people needed a space where they weren’t just employees receiving orders, but citizens actively participating in a shared environment.

Then the industry forgot the verb and focused only on the noun: the building.

We started acting like traditional politicians—managing our members from the top down. Treating them like consumers rather than participants.

When you market ‘community’, you’re asking people to consume it. Show up, pay the membership fee, receive “belonging” like it’s a perk in a subscription package.

But consumption isn’t involvement. And without involvement, there’s no commitment.

Without commitment, there’s no community. Just a room full of people who happened to buy the same product.

What Happens When You Treat People Like Participants

Last week at the Blue Garage, sixty-seven independent space owners, community managers, and artists gathered for an unconference.

No keynotes. No panels. Small groups where you could say the things that don’t usually get airtime.

Suzanne Murdock travelled down from Newry:

“In small groups we spoke honestly about the shifting landscape of employment, business and coworking. Financial pressure, team strain, loneliness at the top, quiet ambition but lack of capacity. Ambition alongside exhaustion. There were moments when the room felt emotional because people were saying things out loud.”

Jason Smith came from Bristol. Two hours in, he’d already got most of his questions answered:

“I feel like I’ve made some friends. People I’d be confident chatting to in the future.”

This is what DeKoven called “working together as equals.”

Suzanne left with notes and ideas. But more importantly: “I walked in needing clarity. I left with hope.”

That’s what being in the room gives you.

Taking the Armour Off — May 19th

If you’re leading a space right now, you are quietly carrying more than most people see.

Where do you go to put that weight down? Where do you find the room to take the armour off?

We’re building that room again on May 19th at Space4 in Finsbury Park.

It’s a space built on actual co-operation and mutual support. We are running the exact same format that worked at Blue Garage.

• You’ll join a small Peer Crew for the day.
• No experts talking at you.
• Just a facilitated group of operators working through the industry’s actual survival questions together.

If you missed Blue Garage, this is your chance to find your people. These are the operators you can text when a crisis hits.

There are two tickets available:

The Assembly Pass is £99 (but only until Friday). It’s the most affordable option and helps us match people to Peer Crews early.

The Community Builder Pass is £150 (always available). If you can afford this one, get it. It helps us keep the Assembly Pass accessible for operators on tighter budgets.

Both tickets get you into the same room, where you have the same conversations - Sign up here.

⚡️ Bernie’s Picks

• 📖 Read (Important): My friend, podcaster, and author Sangeeta got annihilated as “foreign scum” online recently. She took that awful experience and wrote this incredibly powerful piece in response. Please read it here.

• 📖 Read: Peter Block is launching the 3rd edition of his legendary book, Community. I’ve been reading, learning from, and applying this book since it came out in 2014. The launch is on Tuesday, March 10th on Zoom. [See the LinkedIn post here] and [Register directly on Zoom here].

• 📍 Participate: People are getting active to make our future better all across the UK. Find a project near you by popping your postcode into Antidote Studio‘s new website, by Maryam Pasha and Matt Golding - Find a project near you.

• 🎧 Listen: Coworking Values Podcast – Why Glasgow’s First Coworking Space Stayed All-Subscription with Teresa Jackson. We talk about being accidental landlords, absorbing risk so members don’t have to, and the monthly model that never changed.

• 📅 Attend: Women in Flex Event on March 4th, leading up to International Women’s Day. It’s moderated by Marydeana Nolan, Director of Marketing at technologywithin.

• 🛠 Tool: Eden – I hate to share my secrets, but Eden just revealed an amazing new canvas feature. It lets you pull everything you are working on—like all the pieces of this newsletter—into one place to help you arrange it.