There is no denying that Barking has changed over the last eight years as the developments continue at pace. Every window I look out of shows a crane building the next stage of development. I have lived and worked in Barking and Dagenham most of my life, I am enormously and shamelessly biased about it I was born here. However, even some of the changes have astonished me. I never dreamed that Barking could become the epicentre of a creator economy but it’s happening right now.
If your unfamiliar with the terminology, to be honest I was then broadly speaking it is defined as the class of businesses built by over 50 million independent content creators, curators, and community builders including social media influencers, bloggers, and videographers, all supported by tech and apps. There is another big part of support for this creator economy and that is workspace. Not your traditional serviced office (although we do have those) but a vibrant, fluid space which encourages creativity, allows for flexible usage, and delivers a space to meet like minded people.
We hope by bringing Three Sixty Workrooms to the town centre we can continue to deliver the support the flourishing creator economy needs locally. In fact, that’s important to us, as we are more than workspace providers, we provide a wraparound business support offer which provides training, business to business connections, one to one mentoring using industry experts. Our mission is to ensure that businesses thrive and grow. We just won the SME News award for our business support initiative in East London we are dead proud to be acknowledged publicly for our work.
I keep getting asked why we branched out from our traditional workspace model into the creator economy well, the short answer is it’s a bit of a gamble to be frank. I thought with a shift in workplace policies and work from home flexibility, the creator economy faces a conundrum with an influx of aspiring creators, and many view the creator economy as a chance to do something they love as a part-time job to serve as extra cash. While the massive growth of the creator economy is hard to believe, it continues to rise given the industry boom brought by the Covid-19 pandemic. We always wanted to remain at the forefront of our industry so why not excited…yes worried it won’t work of course!
The area is changing, and creativity will be at the forefront of making all that happen, there is plenty of space and a warm welcome for new members to the creator economy locally and an even warmer welcome to our founding members who will be getting a great deal. Just £99 per month for the first 20 to join our community, it really is a steal.
