Welcome to Spin Street House
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Twenty Fifty is dead, long live Twenty Fifty! Okay, so not exactly dead. Twenty Fifty as a company lives on, but Twenty Fifty the coworking space shall henceforth be known as Spin Street House. The name change goes hand-in-hand with a strategic repositioning and a burst of new energy, marking the beginning of the next era of the community. Read on for some of our thinking behind it, and a glimpse at what is to come.
If you’re unfamiliar with Twenty Fifty, it’s a membership-based coworking space in Cape Town. Read more about it and coworking in this post that I wrote a while back.
We started it before we actually knew what it was going to become. We were considering establishing an Impact Hub, but treated it more like an experiment that would morph as we figured it out. For that reason we came up with a somewhat neutral name, a working title that embodied what we were trying to create. Twenty Fifty refers to the year 2050, a mid-century milestone close enough that it’s within our lifetime, but far enough away for the world to be drastically different by then. We wanted to bring together people doing interesting things, and nurture the work and ideas that would positively impact the world around us and contribute to the kind of world we would want to live in by mid-century.
We managed to get Twenty Fifty off the ground with some MacGyver-esque bootstrapping, and after the first few months the community started to grow. We’ve had many incredible people join us over the last two years, every one of them playing a role in its development. Not to say it’s been easy — it certainly hasn’t — but starting a coworking space in Cape Town has been a really rewarding experience.
Now it’s at a point where we know what works, what doesn’t, and what is worth nurturing. In some sense, we’re finally beginning to “find ourselves”, and we believe that now is the right time to kick that working title and reinforce our place in the city.
What’s behind the new name?
The obvious answer is that it refers to where we are. Spin Street House is located at 8 Spin Street, a tall, narrow building in what is possibly one of Cape Town’s shortest streets. There’s something about the way institutions are tied to the image of the edifice in which they operate. Cities are first and foremost made up of people, but those people operate behind facades and within spaces to which we attach meaning. We identify a city by its built form, the collection of buildings that make up a street or city skyline.
There’s something powerful behind a building that represents the institution that operates within it. One could think of Twenty Fifty simply as a business that is based in a building in Spin Street (it could be anywhere), while Spin Street House is the institution and location as one. Across the road from Spin Street House on Church Square is an imposing building with the words “National Mutual Life Association of Australasia, Ltd” across the facade — obviously from the institution for which the building was built — but that building now houses Iziko Museums’ Social History Collections. One might well still refer to the building as “the Mutual Life building”. We’d love for Spin Street House to still be standing strong in the year 2050, even if the use of the building has changed entirely.
What happens at Spin Street House?
There are four key pillars that have come to define the Spin Street House community, how we operate, and what we value. These values are what we’re building on.
Connection
First and foremost Spin Street House is a place for people to connect. It is essentially doing what a city does, that is to bring people together in close proximity, making exchange more efficient. Our members connect at a social level as friends and at a professional level as collaborators. They help each other around small hurdles, answer each other’s questions, work together on projects, and even hire each other. Outside of the community, they connect with the rest of the world through the Internet, which our incoming super fast fibre connection will make even more powerful.
Progress
One does not join Spin Street House just to continue doing business as usual (*click here for bonus meme). Whether you like it or not, the social forces at work elevate what you’re doing to the next level. We believe in constantly moving forward, learning from experience, and improving yourself, your work, and the world around you. We want to inspire and enable each other to adopt a bias toward action and progress.
Wellness
We believe in health, wellness, and nourishment. Our physical wellbeing largely influences our happiness and our ability to do good work. We believe in eating well and eating together, being active and adventurous both physically and mentally, and nurturing the natural environment to which we are ultimately connected. We do these things in various ways, including doing yoga together, early morning hikes up Lion’s Head, grabbing lunch together, collectively opting into a local community supported agriculture (CSA) system, and essentially encouraging each other to live well within our means.
Culture and civic engagement
We believe in art as a fundamental element of human life through which we connect with and better understand each other and the world. Many of our members work in the creative and cultural industries, which we want to help foster. But beyond engaging in culture at a professional level, we also value the consumption of and engagement with culture as a community. We’re excited to host a number of engaging exhibitions in the coming year, and bring practicing artists into the space to present and talk about their work. And as we inhabit a built environment that is layered with history, we believe it’s important to discover that history and understand the cultures and movements that have informed the now. One of the ways we do this is through walking adventures together with fellow members — something we’re looking forward to doing more of.
Together these values create a powerful concoction and interesting environment from which to engage with and add value to the world.
What we’re looking forward to at Spin Street House
Space upgrades
New team spaces, new furniture, a meeting room, new lighting, and other nice new things to make Spin Street House the coolest clubhouse in the city.
Internet
We’re going from 20Mbps to 100Mbps fibre in early 2016. “YOU get fast Internet! YOU get fast Internet! EVERYBODY gets fast Internet!” — Oprah
Growing team
We’re recruiting a team of hosts, local and international interns, and a full-time community manager going into 2016. If you’re interested in being involved, get in touch.
Growing community
Besides adding more capacity for more members, our community continues to grow and diversify, with more and more people working in various creative industries and entrepreneurial circles.
More activity
We’ve always got things going on, but Spin Street House will have a consistent programme of social activities, outings, workshops, meetups, exhibitions, and other community-driven initiatives.
Partnerships
We’re looking forward to some great local and international partnerships with other communities and spaces, along with looking into potential partnerships with larger organisations that can be mutually beneficial.
Stay engaged
You’ll be hearing a lot more from us as we undertake this transition into Spin Street House. Stay engaged by following us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and sign up for email updates on our website. Better yet, email us and schedule a visit to come by and see the space and community in person.
Here’s to an exciting road ahead at Spin Street House. See you soon.
