What should the new hackspace location include?

[Federico Pettinella]

Hiya,

I was researching for cheap offices for the new hackspace and found a few places that I compiled in a Google Sheet here. We currently pay £1920 per year which is incredibly cheap - considering the cost of living crisis I highly doubt we will get the same cost anywhere, especially considering that this price included services. However, I did look around and find a few places around the same price.

This made me think more broadly around what the hackspace is trying to achieve with a physical location. I wanted to get others' thoughts on this as well so please, share your thoughts. If you'd like me to create an anonymous survey I could also do that.

For example, I think it'd be cool if the hackspace could have tools which could be rented by hackspace members and non-hackspace members, but the hackspace members get ~75% off or something. This would also help towards keeping the hackspace a financially viable organisation. Or the hackspace could have larger tools which can be used at the space, like a soldering area with high ventilation or a spray-painting area with the same.

I'm not sure that a simple office rental would cover these ambitions, but I'm not sure if others are interested in the same. What do you think?

Kind regards,

Federico