Spaceworks Wins RICS Social Impact Award (2020)

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) hosted their inaugural Social Impact Awards in May 2020. These awards recognised the positive contribution that different types of buildings and the organisations who run them make towards society.

We were entered in the commercial section for the South West region for any commercial property development or initiative whether retail, office, industrial or mixed-use.

Bristol Spaceworks Directors, Neil Pirie and Peter Caldwell, alongside Chief Executive, Matt Johnstone, met the RICS judges earlier in the year and showed them around three of the 6 buildings which are managed and owned by Bristol Spaceworks.

On the tour, we introduced the judges to some of our licensees, to show the impact our affordable workspace has on the community in which we are based. Muna Abdi from Primeway Care in Easton Business Centre and Richard Akinwunwi from New Covenant Church at Old Schoolhouse in Barton Hill gave powerful first-hand testimonials of how they have developed and thrived since taking a workspace with Bristol Spaceworks. The judges also visited Redbrick House, our most recent acquisition and first foray into the co-working sector.

Due to the pandemic, the award ceremony was hosted via the slightly surreal medium of YouTube and we were delighted to win the commercial award in a hotly contested category. We will now progress to the national awards taking place in London in September.

The judges said:

“Spaceworks’ is not an individual scheme but a concept of providing affordable, flexible office and workspace for people in the area. We viewed three buildings, all completely different and all achieved the scheme concept in different ways.

With occupants as varied as a group of Somalis who provide high-quality social care cross-community and with a commitment to breaking down barriers to a group of artists to a Pentecostal Christian Church.”

https://www.rics.org/uk/training-events/rics-awards/rics-awards-southwest/