We never had a plan. We just opened the door.

So Reader,

Back in 2016 when Phil and I ran WorkHubs in Euston, there was a garage between our building and The Wesley Hotel next door. The Wesley was London's first ethical hotel. Their entire USP is sustainability. Everything they do.

James, the hotel manager, decided to pull the garage door up.

They made a pop-up café and a tiny garden out of pallets and reclaimed wood. Doug Shaw came along with a friend and did an art project. That artwork is still there today, 10 years later.

The garage door opened to the street. We drank gorgeous espresso coffee made by Katie and started bumping into our neighbours.

That's where this starts.

You know what it's like running a space on your own. You're doing everything, and there's no backup. You're a landlord, community manager, event coordinator, and plumber. You're it.

And then someone next door does something simple—opens a door—and suddenly you're not on your own anymore.

There was never a great strategy for what happened next. James Barr didn't have a community plan. Philip Dodson, the coworking space owner, didn't have a collaboration framework. They just decided to be adjacent.

And adjacency, it turns out, is the whole practice.

The collaborative habit

Twyla Tharp wrote "The Collaborative Habit." Her central argument: collaboration creates something neither party could make alone. Not better versions of the same thing. Something entirely new that didn't exist before either of them showed up.

What makes Tharp's book essential is that it documents the gritty reality of creating high-stakes, creative work with others. Not the Instagram version.

She proves this by detailing her partnerships with an incredible range of creative giants. Musicians like Billy Joel, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Costello, David Byrne, and Bob Dylan. Dance and film legends like Jerome Robbins, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Milos Forman.

These weren't just jobs for hire. They were true collaborations where the final product was something none of them could have envisioned or created alone.

The garage café was proof of the same principle at local scale.

The coworking space couldn't have made it. The Wesley couldn't have made the art club. Doug Shaw and Phil brought the artists. James brought the door. The neighbourhood brought everything else.

Collaboration works when both sides bring something distinct and commit to making something new together.

It's not the events that do the work

Inside the coworking space, there were clubs running:

• Art Club
• Podcast Club
• Creator Write Club
• London Bloggers Meet Up
• In spring 2016 we were one of the first Olio • Share More, Waste Less pickup fridges in London

Each club was its own world. But there was a small group of people who cross-pollinated between them. They were the ones who said: "You should come to write club to do your podcast show notes." And "You should do a podcast about your art."

They weren't running anything. They weren't in charge of anything. They were just genuinely curious about everything.

And for a period of time, everything became interconnected and interdependent.

And it was great.

That's the plot twist. It wasn't the clubs. It was the people who connected them.

This magic, this interdependence, is a phase. A beautiful and powerful one, but like all things, temporary. I often see people create something wonderful and expect it to run on its own forever, but communities ebb and flow.

Acknowledging this helps us appreciate these moments of intense connection for what they are, without being crushed when the energy shifts.

I learned a lot about this from April Rinne, who I first met years ago at OuiShare Fest and caught up with again in Galicia in summer 2022 while she was walking the Camino.

Her book, "Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change," is an epic guide for this reality. It was published in 2021, right in the heart of the pandemic, when everything felt uncertain. Its wisdom on dealing with constant change is more essential than ever.

This didn't only happen in Euston

From 2013 I was part of the Ouishare movement—the European collaborative economy network. My main contribution was working on events, running OuiShare London with Elena Giroli and Elena Denaro, and doing the podcast with Emily Breder that became what is now the Coworking Values Podcast.

Through OuiShare, I got to see so many spaces around Europe that may not have called themselves a coworking space, but they were collaborative spaces. They were the intersection for so many activities in their neighbourhood. You might even call them multi-use spaces.

The ones that lasted were the ones connected to their neighbourhood.

OuiShare was active across Europe from around 2012 to 2024. As a think-and-do tank and global community, OuiShare brought together the people building the collaborative economy—from open-source advocates to urban innovators—to connect, share ideas, and shape a more open, collaborative future.

The Coworking Values—collaboration, openness, community, accessibility, sustainability—came out of that movement. They weren't written by a think tank. They were written by people who had already lived the garage door moment and wanted to name what happened.

OuiShare is gone now. But the Coworking Values are still here.

The Great Get Together

On June 15, 2017, we set up a table on Stephenson Way for The Great Get Together in memory of Jo Cox MP, who was murdered on June 16, 2016.

This year, 2026, marks the 10-year anniversary of her assassination

We ran a pop-up Art Club as part of the street party. Simple setup: a table in the street with paper, pastels, and crayons. People from the neighbourhood and the coworking space came to sit, colour, and talk throughout the afternoon.

The connection with the GMB Union, who were key to making the street party happen, didn't come from a formal meeting. It happened because their members were customers at the Garage Cafe. Daily, informal interactions—getting coffee—laid the groundwork for a community event.

This was grassroots Twyla Tharp. Not on the same scale as working with Elvis Costello, but the same principle: two different worlds (a coworking Art Club and a street party run by a trade union) came together to create something new that neither would have done alone.

All this started with Doug Shaw

I met Doug at a construction conference somewhere in 2012. He came and ran an art club at our networking breakfast, which turned into Art Club, which we ran every Wednesday at WorkHubs and then in other coworking spaces.

So many good things came out of it. We did Art Club at the Jo Cox Street Party with the GMB Union in the street next door to us.

Phil hadn't picked up a paintbrush since school. The first time he did was at that networking breakfast when Doug ran the art workshop at the coworking space.

A few years later, Phil turned his shed into an artist's studio.

He's been painting or drawing every day for the last 10 years.

And now Doug Shaw is running as the Green Party of England and Wales candidate in the local elections in Sutton.

Ten years later, that's what these two guys are doing.

Which brings us to now

European Coworking Day is May 6th, 2026.

It's happening in coworking spaces across Europe. Independent spaces opening their doors. We're encouraging people to host:

• ACTionism screenings (a documentary by the Re-Action Collective that tells the story of Ellie Meredith and Jon Alexander )
• Pop-up Art Clubs
• Pop-up Coworking sessions
• Pop-up Write Clubs
• Talk Clubs

This list isn't exhaustive. These are just the things we've done and know work.

By hosting any of these, you can invite people from your immediate local community and create those interactions. The sort of thing we absolutely would have done at WorkHubs in the garage café in the old days.

It's a movement run by Coworking Switzerland as part of the European Coworking Assembly —a network that includes London Coworking Assembly, the Coworking Values Podcast, and the European Rural Coworking Project - to name a few!

Every coworking space I've ever been in is looking for ways to connect more deeply with its local area. It comes up every time—at Unreasonable Connection, in the coworking values community, in every honest conversation about what these spaces are actually for.

There's always someone in the room who says:

"We need to do a better job of helping people outside our bubble understand what a coworking space actually does for a neighbourhood."

In Europe, European Coworking Day is that moment. Not a corporate campaign. It's not a 'coworking super group,' it's a collective answer to a question the coworking community has been asking itself for years.

The most powerful space isn't inside either building.

It's the space between them.

Cheesey analogy: What is the garage door you could pull up in your area?

Coming up on the Coworking Values Podcast

On the world's second-best coworking podcast in the next few weeks, talking local neighbourhood creativity, S Club 7, how democracy emerges at work, why LLMs and interfaces don't create moats, what the decline of nightclubs and offices have in common, and how to connect people before an event with:

Nico Jouavel (AKA) Koder, Hannah Mojica, Mathias Vanluchene, Carlos Almansa Ballesteros, Gislene Haubrich, Rosie Sherry, Mark Masters.

🎙️Get it all here on Coworking Values Podcast and the LinkedIn Show Notes here on LinkedIn

⚡️ Bernie's Picks

Books

The Collaborative Habit - Twyla Tharp The anchor for this whole piece. Collaboration creates something neither party could make alone.

Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change - April Rinne Written in 2021, more essential now.

Podcast

How to Save Democracy - Neighbourhood Power with Omezzine Khelifa, Jon Alexander

Activate

ACTionism - The documentary by the Reaction Collective Host it in your space on May 6th. Start the conversation. Request a screening here.

European Coworking Day - May 6, 2026. Independent spaces are opening their doors across Europe. Find your nearest event or register your own - put your space on the map here.

Unreasonable Connection Live! May 19th, Finsbury Park - only 30 tickets left!

People Worth Following

Doug Shaw Artist. Community builder. Green Party candidate in Sutton. The man who pulled up the garage door with us in Euston.

Monday Domino

If you run or own or are anywhere near a coworking space in Europe, go to European Coworking Day and stick your space on the map.

Participation in European Coworking Day is particularly useful for rural and independent neighbourhood spaces to collectively raise awareness of the power of a space, as we've described in this newsletter.

This one act will help everything you could do on that day fall into place. When you put your pin in the map, everything will come together.

You know, start before you're ready, ship early, if you're not embarrassed by your first version, you've shipped too late - it's like all that motivational bollocks - put your pin in the map and let's go!

Thank you for your time and attention today

Bernie 💚🍉

p.s. The next in-person gathering for Unreasonable Connection is 19th May in Finsbury Park