Size: 1 - 5
About us
Who we are
Makespace Oxford's mission is to revive, repurpose and transform empty and underused spaces into affordable, community driven workplaces; nurturing connection and support for social enterprises, creatives, makers and doers, committed to positive social change.
Makespace Oxford, a Community Interest Company, was formed in 2015 by a small group of community-led organisations, struggling to find affordable work space in Oxford. Since then, we’ve opened several ‘meanwhile’ spaces, including Aristotle Lane in Jericho and Makespace Central in Park End Street, which house over forty social enterprises, workers cooperatives, small charities and creative individuals.
We also supported the Open House project, a talking shop on housing and homelessness. We are currently working on our most ambitious project to date, ‘Meanwhile in Oxfordshire’, which launched in early 2021. The programme was developed by Oxford City Council, with funding secured by OxLEP from the central government’s Getting Building Fund. The number of vacant units on Oxfordshire’s high streets has steadily increased in recent years, and has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, yet there is no shortage of people and organisations in need of affordable space.
The programme, running until June 2022, is working to identify, secure, fit out and let out units across Oxfordshire, to local, independent and community-driven organisations on short-term or ‘meanwhile’ leases. Our hope is that, through this work, we can bring to life a new vision for our high streets; one that puts people over profit, and that supports connection, creativity and community wealth building.
