Coworking In Bacup

Coworking in Bacup – it’s here! We recently spoke to Stephen Anderson from Village Heritage who is breathing life back into a historic building in the centre of Bacup. Available as a podcast from 7th Feb – Coworking Community Comes To Bacup

Stephen Anderson

“I am Steven Anderson, I’m the chair of Valley Heritage which is a charity building preservation trust. I’m also a director of Buttress  Architects. A preservation trust is a kind of organization that looks to make sure that heritage is used and valued. And we tried to come up with creative ways to make sure that historic buildings, the kind of buildings that populate our towns, villages and cities are kind of just well used and well looked after really. We want to see every single one of the heritage trust buildings across our area, which is Rossendale, used, valued, and making a positive contribution to the community.”

“Since the industrial revolution, Bacup’s kind of been a downward spiral. There’s so much pride there, Bacup’s got a really strong community and at the moment there are some really positive plans that the local council has developed with the community to reinvigorate the town and regenerate it and Valley Heritage is trying to play its part in those plans by bringing forward one of the really prominent buildings in the town center, which is the former Lancashire and Yorkshire Bank. Many of you who’ve driven through Bacup will recognise it from the really characterful tower that sits on the corner of the building and with a lot of support we’ve been able to purchase that building and our plans are to make the ground floor of that building the coworking space.”

“The Old Lancashire and Yorkshire Bank”

It was built in the 1870s as Lancashire and Yorkshire Bank which evolved out of the Alliance Bank. It’s actually etched into the stone on one side of the building if you fancy a look. Through its history and the banking industry, banks change hands along with their buildings so the building ended up with Barclays who already had a site in Bacup at the time so they decided to close the Lancashire and Yorkshire site down since then it’s just gone through a number of different owners and uses.

What’s it going to include?

The building’s got a basement and three floors. The ground floor is the coworking space, the bedsits on the other two floors will be removed to make way for proper one-bedroom quality accommodation. Stephen goes on to say how partnerships are embedded in coworking and in the project and there’s very little that an organisation like Valley heritage can do without strong partnerships.

Village Heritage is partnering with an organization called “M3 Project who’s a Rossendale based organisation that helps young people at risk of homelessness. Young people who might have had a change in circumstances or they might be suffering or whatever it might and one of the things that challenging is getting access to property that we can put people into and support them through a transitional stage in their life to gain independence and move on into more permanent accommodation.” Village Heritage is able to do is through the project in Lancashire and Yorkshire Bank by providing that accommodation for them by partnering with M3 Project. “This partnership is incredibly exciting, and it’s got mileage to look at all the properties around Rossendale and Lancashire to do similar kinds of things.”

Village Heritage wants this to be a place that anyone feels welcome and all the people who want to do business from it can come and do business from it. The fee structure hasn’t been decided yet and there are around 12-18 months to go and figure that out.

Stephen explains how “the local community is really relevant around the project as well. We’ve been getting lots of offers to support, help clean up for the building and all that kind of thing, and it’s important towards that local community owns projects. We might be the vehicle for delivering it, but it’s about the community, not about us.”

Built by the community

This got me thinking about Newtons, we developed the historic building, took a bit of the high street, and stopped it from going derelict, and then it stopped being something I created about 12 months ago. I think now with the community putting their own kind of ideas in, their own thoughts; their own themes it’s become a community coworking space now – the one I created went maybe a year ago and now it’s been built by the community.

Listen as well!

You can listen to our interview with Stephen Anderson at Village Heritage – Coworking In T’North

You can of course also try coworking before this fantastic space opens up in Bacup – see whats its all about and visit Newtons