This month, Cardiff celebrates the launch of its newest creative hub, Meanwhile House Cardiff. If you’d visited a few months ago, you would have found yourself in a drab and uninhabited office building. Today you will find yourself in a vibrant and inspired crowd of creatives.
Bristol-based organisation Meanwhile Creative behind the project have been transforming neglected commercial spaces into creative and low-cost workspace for freelancers, entrepreneurs and small enterprises since 2011.
A recent partnership with Talis Capital is helping Fred Wyatt, the founder of Meanwhile Creative take his business model to the next level, starting in Cardiff. Meanwhile Creative will be opening more creative workspaces across the major cities of the UK over the course of the next few years, with technology-led development.
Founder of Meanwhile Creative, Fred Wyatt explained:
“In Bristol our buildings have always been full and our research shows that there is also huge nationwide demand for what we do. We can’t wait to offer workspace to creatives across the country and with Talis we’ll be able to enter multiple cities each year. Our technology platform will be key to efficiently managing thousands of underlying tenants.”
A technology platform will allow Meanwhile to handle tenant on-boarding, billing, facilities management and meeting space bookings, all serving a diverse community that includes hundreds of small businesses, creatives and entrepreneurs.
A diverse group of people and organisations use Meanwhile Creative spaces including fashion brands, music producers, illustrators, costumiers, bicycle builders, graphic designers, web developers and allsorts besides. The company say their buildings are the perfect place for growing businesses with 85% of tenants expecting to increase profitability in the coming year.
Marketing Manager of Meanwhile Creative, Jack Doran said:
“The important thing is that we make it accessible, prices will start at only £100/month, so anyone sat at home using their dining room table as an office can give their business its own space.”
“We’re not like other commercial property companies, we’re here to meet the needs of self-starters and ambitious young people. We don’t tie anyone into five year terms, we know our tenants need flexibility to grow and shrink their commitments, which is why we offer rolling contracts.”