[Founder] Tânia — Building a coworking community at CRU Cowork
Hello Tania, thank you so much for your time! Could you please tell us a bit more about you?
My name is Tânia, I’m 36 and I was born in Porto, the city where I still live in. Psychology is my background and I’m currently attending to a Master in Economics and Innovation Management. I’m passionate about arts and creative activities.
What brought you into coworking and how did you come up with the idea of CRU?
Between 2009 and 2012 I was surrounded by artists and creatives that were struggling to find a job in their vocational areas. They were talented and motivated but the crisis in Portugal was cutting out a lot of opportunities. As creatives, they were forced to reinvent themselves and find new paths and become entrepreneurs. At that time I knew a lot of architects who became jewellers or graphic designers that started their own fashion brands, for instance.
They were trying out their products, brands and new projects in street markets once in a while, and they were unhappily working from home, with no feedback to improve and grow their businesses.
That was something I noticed and I wanted to participate in helping these young people to thrive.
I imagined a place where these creatives could work and socialize, in a collaborative and healthy environment, and also could experiment, showcase and sell their work on a regular basis.
Part of that was called coworking and that idea was exactly what CRU became. We opened doors as a coworking space, art gallery and designer’s shop in February 2012. We were one of the first coworking spaces in Porto and we are still this ‘one of a kind’ creative hub.
How would you describe CRU Cowork?
CRU Cowork is a creative hub, located in the art spot of Porto, Portugal. In our 400 m2 facilities we combine a coworking space focused on creative activities, an art gallery, workshops and a designers’ shop.
Our mission is to provide the best conditions to maintain our community active, thriving and international while enhancing the individual potential of each one of our freelancers and solopreneurs from Creative Industries. For that, we offer spaces and services at bearable costs, in an environment that is appropriate for artistic creation, productivity, networking, collaborations, and ultimately, contributes to the well-being and friendships among coworkers.
How do you create a sense of belonging at CRU?
For a sense of belonging we need to create a strong community and in order to create this lasting community, we carefully craft it and curate who is part of its circle.
In order to have a real community, individuals must sense they have a certain number of values and goals in common, and they must be willing to give from their time and their knowledge to enrich this ecosystem. we have this particular scope around creative industries that already is a membrane to limit our group of coworkers and partners but we also interview and select individuals according to our core values, work style, and goals. As we are growing our community every day but also have limited space, curation has become more relevant to ensure that we don’t lose our mission or our personality on the way up.
For a continued caring of this fragile and demanding community we organize several social events on a weekly and monthly basis. We have a weekly talk by one of our coworkers, a monthly barbecue party in our yard that unites cowokers, ex-cowokers, partners and neighbours, a series of talks called Altruistic Sessions, for sharing knowledge and experiences or getting feedback from others and four outdoors events per year, one at each season where we gather in an adventure like surfing or ice skating and we invite our coworkers, their friends, families and pets! the rest is up to the amazing people we have around us!
You’ve been in coworking for a while now, what do you see as the big challenges for the market?
I confess that I think that CRU never fitted the simple and pure concept of coworking. We are a Creative Hub which has a big concern about its social impact and a mission of awareness around cultural and artistic creation.
As we are not a purely space-based business but more a community-based hub, the challenges we face are related to the future of work issues and related to the creation of services and innovative methodologies for helping creative industries independent workers to thrive in this quick changing environment.
As coworking will be more and more mundane and massively adopted, some challenges for medium size coworking spaces is to have a real impact in a local and international perspective as well as adding value to their members through facilitating well-being and preventing social isolation, in a differentiated way.
Where do you find inspiration to innovate / reinvent what CRU is?
We tend to dance the music that our members play.
They inspire us and motivate us to innovate and to go further (or deeper) in what are their needs and aspirations. we also do a lot of cross-industry solutions for apparently small problems or challenges and, finally, but very important, we rely on our peers — other creative hubs and coworking spaces — to exchange good practices, discuss ideas or even to cry on each other’s shoulders, as we all need it sometimes. We are luckily surrounded by amazing hub leaders and friends all over Europe that inspire us with their wildest ideas and boldest plans!
Some of your favorite memories at CRU?
Memories…
We have hundreds of photos that tell all our story so far and on each anniversary we slideshow a new selection of ‘best moments’. some of those are moments from our monthly all-night-long parties that end in dj’ing and dancing, some of them are from the launch of new brands that we supported and helped to be born, or from the opening of an emergent artist’s exhibition that we showcased at our gallery. We also have a lot of memories related to lifelong friends that we made through these happy and busy years!
What’s next for CRU, anything you can share?
Oh..we have tons of plans! and we are working on big challenges at this precise moment.
We are totally focused on our international relations and working together with some partners in joint projects to build new services and opportunities to our members.
We’ll have some wild news coming up this year, stay tuned!
