The Can Do Concept
Can Do Crieff has repurposed the Strathearn Artspace lower ground floor, making a co-working space with a difference. Can Do Crieff Members (all CDC co-workers are Members) will have a choice of work station types, ranging from standing, hot-desking to more established office style spaces plus a dedicated meeting room. There is also an area where people can sit in a comfy seat, away from their desks, or where visitors can wait.
The design for the co-working space intends to promote networking and to encourage a co-operative, convivial environment; striking a balance between defined boundaries and the benefits of shared space, allowing members to work effectively and reasonably quietly.
Although Can Do Crieff is being funded on a shoe string, it will be a stylish, purpose-built and novel working / learning / sharing environment. CDC expect there to be a collective sense of belonging and pride in being part of this new way of working. These are important work space positives which are unavailable in spare bedrooms and at kitchen tables, where the self-employed often find themselves trying to run a business, usually in isolation.
Whatever the nature of their enterprise, Members will be free to personalise their patch, while enjoying the benefits of a collective environment. There is a dedicated Can Do Crieff manager who will have a desk in the space.
The project has many supporters in the local community and further afield, ensuring plenty of diversity of experience, knowledge and resources. Also, an important practical benefit to CDC is the Open Reach fibre cabinet located just by the entrance, which ensures high speed broadband for everyone; an essential for any business these days.
The design for the co-working space intends to promote networking and to encourage a co-operative, convivial environment; striking a balance between defined boundaries and the benefits of shared space, allowing members to work effectively and reasonably quietly.
Although Can Do Crieff is being funded on a shoe string, it will be a stylish, purpose-built and novel working / learning / sharing environment. CDC expect there to be a collective sense of belonging and pride in being part of this new way of working. These are important work space positives which are unavailable in spare bedrooms and at kitchen tables, where the self-employed often find themselves trying to run a business, usually in isolation.
Whatever the nature of their enterprise, Members will be free to personalise their patch, while enjoying the benefits of a collective environment. There is a dedicated Can Do Crieff manager who will have a desk in the space.
The project has many supporters in the local community and further afield, ensuring plenty of diversity of experience, knowledge and resources. Also, an important practical benefit to CDC is the Open Reach fibre cabinet located just by the entrance, which ensures high speed broadband for everyone; an essential for any business these days.
There is a lot of good will and enthusiasm behind this project and a wide-spread desire to see this new Can Do Places enterprise become one of the first successes of it’s kind, away from the population centres Scotland. A success which is anticipated could, with other projects by the Crieff Community Trust, help to re-invigorate Crieff’s moribund commercial centre. It is possible this new way of working will generate demand for a second venue, using another unused town-centre building…
Crieff Community Trust's Can Do Crieff initiative is not just supporting, it is investing and hoping to drive change, in a way which might make it a model for other venues around provincial Scotland, especially in less populous rural centres.
The Can Do Places ethos, espoused by Iain Scott, aims to stimulate development and thinking, through information-sharing, presentations and much more. In providing new co-working spaces, an opportunity is created to get out of inert office spaces and into an equipped and lively working space with, theoretically, a limitless potential for networking, beyond a community scale, with no parochial reticence about what people are capable of doing. Most successful examples of similar spaces in Scotland are in or near population centres. CDC endeavours to take this further and to demonstrate that it is the people, far more than the location, which will be the essential resource and that enterprise will disperse a better work:life balance and herald a decline in commuter drudgery.
CDC’s host, the Strathearn Artspace is a really important success story for the Crieff community so it is fitting that Can Do Crieff begins it’s journey in close co-operation with the Artspace, helping to mark a bright new beginning for the fight back for Crieff as the hub of Strathearn. All this work is down to the efforts of volunteers in the community, some of whom have worked tirelessly for years trying to bring about change, improvement and funding. This year, all that hard work looks like it is bearing fruit.
Fiona Rodger Interiors is pleased to be involved with Can Do Crieff. It has been an interesting challenge which has involved managing a tiny budget, using existing limited resources and encouraging some much appreciated local and national donations. We look forward to seeing the space being used and to monitoring its development in months to come.
