The Wolf Returns!

What is the wolf? The wolf stops us being lazy, the wolf stops us being greedy... the wolf behind us drives us. What are we with out the wolf...

About this time last year Nottingham Hackspace had some very serious and potentially devastating news. We learned that we had to move out of our Hackspace. This quite literally was putting us out of our comfort zone. We paid the princely and, I admit at the time, scary sum of £100 per month for a suite of rooms above the Tesco's on Station Street in Nottingham. It's an old Police Station and I guess that it was falling into a very poor state of repair.

David H in the workshop of Nottingham Hackspace Circa 2011

At that time we had seemingly few options. Our total income from membership dues was about £200 per month, maybe a little more. We had about £500 in the bank in money earned from kit sales and workshops and we had a lot of good will. In some ways it felt like the Hackspace ride was over, how could we possibly move forward with our backs to the walls and no capital? We scratched around for a new home. We spoke to our landlords, the Art Organisation, who had other highly dilapidated space. Everywhere we looked seemed way too expensive. How could we afford £400 and £500 a month rents when we had an income of only £200? Not only could we not afford the spaces we saw, they didn't meet our ambition. They just weren't big enough. They often had just one room and we'd be climbing over each other to get anything done. Working on code and sawing up wood often doesn't mix. Saw dust is not nice on textiles!

I don't clearly recall when everyone stopped telling me that we couldn't possibly move into the huge set of rooms at Roden House. Before long everyone seemed to believe we could do it. Pull together £2000 in deposit and build up membership over the course of a few months to cover our £1k a month rent. We all did some napkin maths. RepRap Matt, Michael-the-Money and James all did big spreadsheets working out how our income would need to build and how many members we'd need month on month. We negotiated with our (soon to be) landlord and worked out a stepped rent building up month on month starting with two months for free!

In late April 2012 Nottingham Hackspace has received an invoice for a little under £3k in unpaid rent...just like it says in those large famously friendly letters on the cover of the hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy

DON'T PANIC...

We've discussed for sometime that we aren't quite paying our full rent at the moment and had in the past queried this with our landlords. It's important to remember that's we've in no-way defaulted on our monthly payments to the landlord either as we've been paying exactly what they invoice the Hackspace for by direct debit! It seems that since July 2011 our landlords believe they have been under billing us. The board checked Nottinghack's books too and Hackspace accounts show that our landlords are right though we feel that the figure calculated needs some explanation and may not be exactly correct. Hackspace has some negotiating to do as it's the end of it's one year tenancy agreement too. Nottingham Hackspace's landlords apologised for the error and graciously have allowed Hackspace to negotiate a payment plan with no interest being charged on the owed money. 

If anything this new large bill for the Hackspace has been a timely reminder to me that we need to keep the project moving forward. The Hackspace can never afford to get too comfortable or stop actively looking to organise new workshops, events and bring in exciting new members. We need more people and more money to make Hackspace a success. More than that, we need the wolf. Don't get me wrong a sudden unexpected bill for £3k isn't great but it does keep us on our toes. What doesn't kill us will make us stonger. Too many cook's will... not wait a minute that doesn't work.