Here is Jonathan Robinson a founder of the Hub in London. I interviewed Jonathan this week as an opener for a series of interviews of people who are involved in developing Commons Space - a form I think of Trusted Space - across the world.
The interview follows on in the next section.
One of the aspects of the interview that struck me was how similar this thinking about Creative Space is to the end result of the New Realities process where many saw that Public Radio could serve America by creating such a place itself.
So Jonathan why did you get involved?
I see that the world is in a mess. Such a mess that it demands that we use better thinking, better ideas and better ways of working with each other.
But in spite of this need - I see that we are mainly stuck. The institutions that supposedly have this job of running our society just do not seem to be able to allow this type of thought or action.
But the ideas and the people and the action is starting to emerge. Emerge not in institutions but in bars, in coffee shops, in bedrooms and online. The people who are doing the work are usually Free Agents. I see that they struggle to connect to each other. What if they could connect better? What if they had a place to help them connect not just occasionally or online but regularly and face to face?
Conferences help. We have had successful conferences. The Soweto Mountain of Hope is a good example. But it seemed to me that more than a conference was needed. I began to think that we needed some kind of permanent space.
We found a derelict warehouse in London where we saw an opportunity to fit our core intent - finding a space that would improve social interactions so that we could develop a better world - and also to provide an answer to the mundane needs for free agents and like-minded people to have a good work environment.
What was your ingoing model for this space?
We thought of a blend of home, bar, cafe and conventional office space. It had to offer the core requirements of an office - fax, Internet, gadgets printers and so on. But also at a higher level, it had to generate a space where we could find "Emergence", "Serendipity" and the "Unplanned".
I wanted to find a place where we could test this idea about the right kind of space helping create solutions and a better world. I wanted to find a provable process. I knew that we could not get it all right upfront. Our bet was that we would have to use a sort of Open Source approach where we could learn from what we did.
We had big questions to find answers for such as - How were we going to convert Office Space to Community? How were we to promote collaboration and interdependency? What kind of space promotes cross fertilization? How could the conversations of disparate people create opportunities?
Could we find a workable model that we might be able to codify and then be able to spread? Could we do this in a big and a very expensive city like London?
You have been very successful so far with now a large membership of over 120 organizations. You seem to have found some answers. Do you see this idea spreading as you had hoped at the outset?
Yes I think that by trial and error we have found some meta answers. Now a lot of people are in touch and we have had over 30 requests for help. This is not a cookie cutter thing - I think that we may be able to help by offering a kind of "Meta Architecture". So we have set up a legal entity, "Hub Partnership" to help spread the knowledge in the form of Leadership and modeling tools. We are looking at sites in Johannesburg, Bristol, Sao Paulo, Mumbai, Shanghai and New York.
All but Bristol are very large cities? Funny here at the Queen Street Commons our version of the model looks at very small places. We both approach the same goal from the opposite end of the scale chart.
Yes I think so.
So what have been some of the design ideas that have worked to create such a space? What is critical for emergence?
Well we looked at everything. We started with the furniture. It is all bespoke and is designed to connect. Each table connects to the next. There is a flexible and curved shape that create the conditions for people to overhear and to interrupt.
We looked for high density to promote the conditions of connection.
But the most important part of the design is the concept of "Hosting". We always have a Hub Host on site. On the mundane level they do space management but their more important work is to help people connect better. They spot synergies that need to be encouraged.
I drew this model and described it for Jonathan - Is this what you mean? he told me that it was.
(Rob's note to self - When I think of Natural Space, I keep being drawn back to the ideas of Christopher Alexander. Here is a link to his ideas of how to create such space.)
How did you get the density?
We threw out all our old lessons in selling and marketing. Instead we thought about attracting instead. We began with a context and an idea. We framed the idea to attract the people - the idea of finding a social way of unleashing all this potential. We asked how best to design the conditions for a diverse community that could use its value of difference and interdependency. We slowly met people in coffee shops, bars and online and then slowly it started. We started to see the critical success factors emerge from these conversations.
So what now Jonathan - what are your hopes and dreams?
We hope to build as strong a model as possible. We hope that our attention to detail will enable us to discover by practice the best model possible. With a robust model we ourselves will be successful and we will have a trusted model to share with others so that they too can be successful.
We are already developing some simple software to help Hub's manage themselves - such as payment, membership etc in the context of high density so that the admin side does not overwhelm the mission.
My hope is that we are indeed discovering a model that will empower communities to solve their most difficult problems. My hope is that we will work slowly but surely to make this model ever better. To that end we are building a Hub Suitcase of tools to enable others to build theirs. My hope is that soon we can have a network of support all over the world
Thank you Jonathan - your story is very inspiring and helpful
Rob Note to Self - A picture is emerging for me of how a global community like this would look.
