What is Union St?

We’re grateful to have been described as “a co-working space to reflect what Sheffield is all about” (Sheffield City Council), “a new place to get stuff done” (Now Then Magazine), and listed in Creative Boon’s list of The UK’s Top 50 Workspace for Creative Freelancers and Entrepreneurs.

Union St is a project to create a central hub of co-working, street food and public events, founded as an independent social enterprise where our income is re-invested for the common good, bringing this previously empty city centre building back into life and supporting the types of activities our city centre needs.

Why?

Because working from home sucks! Union St was founded partly in response to experiences of being self employed in Sheffield and meeting many people who didn’t have a workplace, and then quickly finding there were a wide range of benefits to developing a collaborative workspace were people could take their laptop to work, rather than having already spent the day at home with cabin fever starting to set in.

How?

The co-working space at Union St is managed by The Co-working Co-operative CIC… a bit of a mouthful! Here’s a quick breakdown of what the company is working to develop;

Co-working – a style of work that involves a shared working environment (full Wikipedia definition here – opens as a new window)

Co-operative – an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically controlled enterprise (full Wikipedia page here – opens as a new window)

CIC – this stands for Community Interest Company, which is similar to a Limited Company (LTD) with the two differences being that:

1) CIC’s re-invest their profits into a developing activities which achieve their social purpose, submitting an annual report to the CIC Regulator, and

2) CIC’s have an asset lock which prohibit the sale of assets into private ownership (full Wikipedia page here – opens as a new window)

Mission

The project’s mission is to create a central place where people can meet, work and collaborate, managed for the benefit of our members rather than for an owner or shareholders, where profits are re-invested into developing the types of facilities and activities our city needs.