WWW.IDAIRELAN.COM T


he trend for co-working is thriving, providing


collaborative, social


environments for start-ups and freelancers in the new gig economy. Once upon a time, if you started a business or worked from home, you did it from your spare room. But humans, being social creatures, thrive on human contact. And so it occurred that we found ways to work for ourselves, but not in isolation, and the trend of co-working was born.


IN THE BEGINNING The first foundations for the co-working space can be traced to C-Base in Berlin, set up by a community of hackers in 1995. By 1999, 42 West 24 opened in New York, offering an attractive working environment and flexible membership options for teams and individuals. However, it was really in the heart of the tech scene that it took off, with San Francisco Coworking Space opening in 2005, and since then the amount of co-working spaces opening each year has steadily grown. Research carried out by Emergent Research predicts that by 2020 there will be four million people operating out of co-working spaces around the world. Ireland has a rising number of co-working


spaces, with Dogpatch Labs, GEC, Glandore, Iconic Offices and the Tara Building among the plethora of offerings in Dublin. However, it is outside the capital city where it


really gets interesting.


Co-working spaces and innovation hubs on the further edges of Ireland have been life- changing for many


freelancers and


entrepreneurs, offering access to high speed broadband and the opportunity to live and work, free of lengthy commutes, with scenic countryside and stunning beaches right on their doorstep. Ludgate Hub in Skibbereen, Co Cork–


hailed as Ireland’s first 1GB town–was the blueprint for other rural hubs. Ludgate’s superfast broadband opened up a world of opportunity for


remote working and entrepreneurship without the overheads of


encouraging inward migration.”


individual office rental or the expense of city living for cash-strapped entrepreneurs.


REBALANCING COMMUNITIES For local communities too, digital hubs have obvious benefits, supporting high value work, and encouraging inward migration to areas which may otherwise have suffered from depopulation and isolation. The Ludgate Hub serves not just Skibbereen but a network of surrounding villages including Leap, Ballydehob, Glandore, Union Hall and the town of Schull. Offering residents the opportunity to engage in the digital economy allows these rural locations to compete with urban hubs and rebalance the economic environment. The idea for the Hub came about in


November 2014, during a conversation between two West Cork natives, Glen Dimplex president, Sean O’Driscoll, who hails from the neighbouring village of Drimoleague, and local retail legend John Field. Sean recalls, “I was acutely aware of the impact digital technology was having in the world. The vision was that it would bring down geographical barriers and if you were living in a rural area, it should no longer be an issue. We started with a simple agenda, which we called ‘Making the impossible possible’.” For Sean, the goal was not The Hub, per se: “It was about one thing only–job creation,” he states emphatically. “Digital technology and The Hub was just the enabler for that.” The ‘Cork mafia’ quickly assembled,


bringing another native, Vodafone CEO Anne O’Leary into the conversation and it was soon agreed that the town would become a pilot project for SIRO, the open access broadband provider, the result of a partnership between the ESB and Vodafone. Sean handpicked a very impressive board,


23 ISSUE 14 Ludgate Hub CEO Adrienne Harrington.


all of whom have connections to the area, including Anne O’Leary, Director General of RTÉ Dee Forbes, film producer Lord David Puttnam and Google’s Ronan Harris. With Field donating the use of a former bakery building he owned in the town of Skibbereen, the stage was set for the launch, and construction began in 2015, with the doors opening in spring of 2016.


SUSTAINABLE JOBS The mandate for the Ludgate Hub was to create an environment which allowed the growth of employment that was made up of a patchwork of small, high value jobs. In this era of globalisation, reliance on one single big company or factory could be devastating to a rural area, were it to pull out and move abroad. One aim of the Ludgate Hub project was to provide an insurance against such an occurrence. Gráinne Dwyer, the first CEO of the


Ludgate Hub recalls, “Because West Cork is such a creative space we would be able to attract tech managers, project managers, developers, artists, designers, web developers and so on.” Current CEO Adrienne Harrington continues on this work,


explaining,


“Ludgate’s key goal is to facilitate the creation of 500 sustainable direct jobs in the wider West Cork area. The Ludgate initiative is not about a building, nor even just about Skibbereen but about the West Cork area. So, progressing this goal has been my key priority since taking on the CEO role last September.”


“Digital hubs have obvious benefits, supporting high value work and


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