Shaping the Future of Work: Learnings from London's First Maker Space for Refugees
Stephen Carrick-Davies and Edy Kenthill talk about the launch of Facework’s new Maker Space and ‘Loft’ coworking space for social entrepreneurs.
For most of his life, Stephen Carrick-Davies has been involved in developing social action projects that help transform the lives of the most disadvantaged people. Whether in India (where Stephen was born) or through digital platforms (he led the children’s internet charity Childnet International for 10 years), Stephen is motivated to work with others to grow innovative and sustainable shared programmes of change.
For the last 10 years, Stephen’s work has involved directing Facework Group, which – as you’ll find out in this article – addresses one of the most important factors in defining social mobility and prosperity: WORK. Established as a Community Interest Company (CIC), Facework does what it says on the tin – help people face work – in all its changes.
Before COVID, the organisation took over an old working men’s club and developed Hatcham House – a multi-purpose hub, today hosting Facework’s award-winning refugee employability training programmes.
But, in reviewing the model of employability training, Stephen and his team wanted to change the emphasis on helping sanctuary seekers APPLY for work to supporting them to MAKE their work, including through self-employment. To do this, they opened (what they feel is) London’s first Maker Space for refugees — Facework.
In this article, Stephen and Edy Kenthill – who joined the organisation last year after completing a degree in Philosophy and Politics – share more about their mission and their model of coworking that combines making activities, mental health support, and direct engagement with local craft makers and creative industries to create new pathways for the journey into work.
1. You’ve helped establish three community spaces in South London. What has the journey been like?
Stephen: I fell into coworking spaces. It's a shared story with lots of connections with work I have previously done in the voluntary sector, social entrepreneurship, and placemaking.
So many places in our neighborhoods are disappearing: pubs, places of worship, and tenant community halls, as examples. Even places where people once met, like the school gate, don’t hold the same space to gather as time-poor parents drop their kids and run.
At a local level, people need and want to have a deeper connection. We’re committed to supporting our uber-local community initiatives, with our coworking spaces becoming part of the local social ecosystem. When you build spaces to work, you open up amazing opportunities for connection and support.
Generally, with entrepreneurship, you have to be agile and frugal. You have to pivot and break things quickly, especially if they're not working. We were asked to come into Peckham Levels as a tenant, to run a coworking space on a managed service basis.
But, when the company running the huge car-park building went into receivership, we were forced to close that door. But another opened, leading us to launch a new workspace for the local community, and a place to host our refugee employability training work: Facework Maker Space.
Last year, our Facework Ukraine programme supported 197 refugees from Ukraine in Lewisham, and Facework Futures works with sanctuary seekers from Africa, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Syria. While running these two programmes, I felt that we couldn’t continue to ask people to apply for jobs or have this tick box exercise (where they've done their CV, interview practice, or written a cover letter), because they’re just getting rejected, as they’re competing with people with much more recent experience.
We’re moving the focus from applying for work to making work. Maker spaces are usually associated with CNC machines and 3D printers, for people with privilege, treating these activities are hobbies. Instead, this space is to make connections, make networks, and make things — the practical aspects helping unemployed people.
We’re supporting some of our refugees to explore what business they can start, linking them up with mentors and other businesses on the high street, and offering a library of tools where they can borrow things. We’ve even got ladders for people developing window-cleaning businesses. By providing practical resources, we’re helping people see that the little change they start can lead to self-employment.
What’s crucial to any service is, of course, quality. We say Quality Attracts Attention, especially with first-rate hospitality and welcome. Spaces and services that aren’t people-centered can feel lifeless and, however beautiful, people won’t stay.
We want to find spaces that don’t feel like traditional coworking ‘box’ spaces. Our new space is on a high street and every day people knock on the door. This allows us to work with users and co-create, link with existing businesses, and be more accessible.
2. Tell me more about Facework, your new maker space on the Lewisham high street.
Stephen: Facework is a lovely, warm, small shop front, where we can host about 25 people. The first thing we did to create our maker space was to work with sanctuary seekers to build the space and transform the old shop (it used to be a Pharmacy).
We’ve kept a prescription sign but added the strapline ‘For making Change,’ as shown in this video. We've got a consultation room and a little kitchenette. Bernie Mitchell, who helped me, is devoted to this project. Milliken gave us the carpet at a good cost.
When we talk about making, it’s not just about arts and crafts. There are products we can make here, and refugees can scale them.
Thinking about communities and workspaces, and having to charge people for a desk, room, or studio, people expect good quality. They also want a social experience. It's not just about Wi-Fi, lockers, or free coffee — people choose to come here.
As people buy online or go to flagship stores, the high street is collapsing around us. We’re providing something, we’re selling a service, a space, but it's much more nuanced than that. We’re trying to improve the high street and footfall.
When people find their tribe or network, and when a place feels homely, professional, and beautiful, it can bring people together on their journey of work.
3. What makes affordable and accessible community spaces essential today?
Stephen: Loneliness is a killer, that's so self-evident that people forget about it.
But why are coworking spaces important? It’s about social capital, placemaking, and meeting real psychological needs. People want to meet and talk, even introverts want to work with other introverts.
Edy: It's about community, and building community is valuable.
Not everyone can afford to pay for workspaces or be a part of an exclusive club. That’s why we call our spaces: community workspaces. They must be open to everyone, especially for those less connected to communities in their daily lives.
Stephen: One caveat to that is communities of difference. We support and celebrate difference — that's the work that Bernie and the European Coworking Assembly do.
We’re making sure that we’re intentionally accessible and valid for people from different areas, not just around finance. We’re passionate about affordability and providing opportunities for those furthest from the labour market.
When they apply for work, many refugees are discriminated against. We want to welcome people and provide people-centered training and support. So much of that comes down to creating welcoming, accessible spaces. Lewisham (where Facework is based) is the UK’s first Borough of Sanctuary. We’re proud that our work supports this ethos and commitment.
4. How do your spaces engage with young people and marginalised groups?
Edy: Our ethos of integrating different communities separates us from other workspaces. We're running different training programs for groups who may have been marginalised for different reasons, and then offering workspaces that follow up on those courses.
Our activities enable people to meet too. On Mondays, we open as a community lounge for people to drop in for a free coffee. Fridays are for more structured making days, which we host with local people running training sessions.
Course attendees can use the workspace, such as Facework Ukraine participants, who have access to a dedicated workspace on a Thursday for coworking, before starting their evening sessions. Last month, we hosted a week-long course on developing a mobile phone repair business. We also provide space for other organisations working with refugees.
This link between training and workspace is so important. It’s one thing to inspire people to start their own business or social enterprise, but practically, they need somewhere to work from and access to a community of like-minded people.
Some of the 20 people in our social entrepreneurship incubator programme — Changemakers — have access to free space for six months. When they finish the training program, they can use desks in a dedicated room for another six months. It’s a good example of when people come for a reason, and stay for a purpose.
Facework provides free membership to five young people whom we intentionally go and find. Being on the high street helps, as people knock on the door and ask: ‘What's this?’ We’re well connected with other non-profit organisations, our local Further Education College, and the Council.
Young people face a real challenge in starting work, and getting a job is such a shock to the system. Workspaces provide the opportunity to learn by working with other people, volunteering, and simply exploring how different sectors of our work economy work.
We offer six places to people under 25 starting their careers or looking to start a business. We assess this case-by-case basis, depending on where they live, their age, and their needs to access the space. That’s been really successful.
As Community Manager, I organise regular check-ins and refer them to others, and we'll talk about their work and how everything's going. We love doing that. It's great to have young people with fresh ideas in the workspace.
We have an ongoing relationship with the Peabody Housing Association, which, for a second year, agreed to fund six places for their residents and SMEs in their network. With this partnership, we can offer free desk space, a workplace community, and business support to six local people who can access the hot desks in the space whenever they want, and have regular check-ins with me. They also have access to our wider network, and may be referred to our Changemakers course.
We tend to run all of our projects at a local level. We're focusing the Peabody membership on Greenwich, Lambeth, Lewisham, and Southwark residents. All of our other programs are targeted at Lewisham residents. The locality factor makes it easier to have cohesion.
It's not just a desk, it's about creating social connection. What’s so exciting about our coworking space is our blended model — we sell desks as part of our service delivery, but we also offer work experience placements (especially for ESOL students), and hire our spaces out for corporate and community events (including weddings) to cross-subsidise our offerings.
5. How do you co-design with communities, and why do you believe this framework can make a positive difference?
Stephen: Lots of people talk about co-design. There is a methodology and a participatory approach to designing solutions, in which we see our workspace community members as equal collaborators.
For our courses, we have more emphasis on co-design. In that sense, it involves a commitment to:
Recognising that users are experts of their own experience
Prioritising meaningful consultation
Postponing design decisions until after gathering feedback
Developing solutions based on feedback
Building and deepening equal collaboration
In the design industry, people talk about having a Minimally Viable Product (MVP), which you can test and break quickly. Over the last 6 years, I suppose we’ve done this and had to trial various approaches, not just in our workspace offering, but in our training courses.
We’ve made mistakes, but ultimately, the test of whether something feels co-designed and authentic is if people keep coming and describing the space as feeling like ‘home’.
Edy: Coworking spaces are largely for people working alone, like business owners or freelancers, and prove valuable in a soft networking sense of building a community.
Our app is a platform for people to share their ideas, connect, and post if they’re running an event or require support. Our coworkers are co-designing their community within the workspace. In our event space, we often offer discounts to our workspace clients for putting on an evening event to showcase their work.
It's this multi-layer idea of ‘coworking plus,’ and the workspace sits over it all, but everything else links in and complements each other in this way.
6. What would you like to see more of in the coworking industry, and how do you see the evolution of community spaces responding to global challenges?
Stephen: We’ll see more migration from South America, because Trump is pulling up the drawbridge, from Lebanon and Palestine, because of the horrors of war, and also because of the huge global insecurity around the environment. Rivers are rising, people are moving. I feel passionately that those who come here need work and to find it quickly.
My main wish is that all coworking spaces around the UK take a more intentional approach to helping those who come to this country to find work and/or get into high-quality training.
Of course, there is real change in the workplace. Anything that can be automated will be taken over by machines — AI, machine learning, quantum computing, globalisation, the gig economy, and mental health are all impacting work. In an age where there is no one job for life, coworking spaces can help people transition and adapt to many jobs throughout their lives.
They say, “If you love what you do, you’ll never do a day's work in your life.” Of course, when you say that you need to ‘check your privilege’, as many people work in soulless and poorly paid jobs just to survive. Nevertheless, helping people find what they love in work is crucial, and coworking spaces can offer good work conditions.
I believe Facework is modelling a more inclusive style of employability training and workspace provision. It’s about inclusion, strengthening local communities, supporting young people, offering mental health and well-being activities, and going out of our way to welcome Sanctuary Seekers.
That’s not something every coworking place can or may want to do, but we’re keen to share our experience and help other workspaces evolve their offering so they have more social impact.
People Make Coworking celebrates the people who make up the fabric of the global coworking movement. By exploring the community, connection, and collaborations – the ‘co’ of coworking – this blog series shares stories from catalysts of the coworking movement and community builders.
If you’d like to share your story in ‘co’, please get in touch. I’d love to speak with you for a future feature.