LinkedIn Show Notes #34 from the Coworking Values Podcast Bullpen.
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Three different community builders. Two continents. One pattern: They stopped optimising for scale and started building for depth. And the people who needed them showed up.
This week from the Coworking Values Podcast Bullpen: We’ve been tracking why some spaces feel like communities and others feel like expensive libraries with good Wi-Fi. Turns out the answer isn’t about beanbags or brand partnerships.
It’s about whether you’re optimising for convenience or building for connection. We found three people who chose connection. Here’s what they built.
The Assignment
- SHAMENA NURSE-KINGSLEY runs a faith-forward coworking space in Alexandria, Virginia, that hosts a church every Sunday.
- Dimitris Manoukas researches how collaborative workspaces in “left-behind” Europe are helping to stop the brain drain.
- Ellie Meredith made a documentary about finding her climate action crew—and now coworking spaces worldwide are hosting screenings that spark local projects.The Assignment
None of them is chasing unicorn funding. None of them apologises for their specificity.
Shamena could have played it safe—called it a “family-friendly workspace” and left the Jesus bit quiet. But she went harder: “unapologetic, faith-forward space grounded in my roots as a proud Air Force veteran.”
In a city of 159,102 people, with 11,597 square feet and a capacity for 338, she likes her odds.
The Injustice We’re Tracking
Here’s what’s broken: The dominant story in coworking says convenience is king. Work from anywhere. Stream church from bed. Optimise everything. Scale or die.
This story hollows out the thing that actually sustains us—the messy, inconvenient, yet essential work of showing up for one another. It tells operators in peripheral places they’re failing. It tells people who care deeply that their energy has no economic value. It treats connection as a byproduct when it’s actually the product.
The market won’t fix this. The state won’t fix this. People do.
Shamena Nurse-Kingsley: The Kingdom Business Model
Shamena spent 20 years in military service, including work supporting a law enforcement agency. She knows how institutions work. She also knows how they fail.
Cowo & Crèche in Alexandria is 11,597 square feet of unapologetic specificity—but here’s what matters: She could’ve played it safe with that much space. Generic “flexible workspace” branding to appeal to everyone. Instead, she went harder on specificity.
Faith-forward. Family-focused. Veteran-owned. It hosts Celebration Church DC every Sunday—not as a client, but as a partner.
“We’re in partnership with the church,” Shamena explains. “There are things the church has put in there that we are allowed access to,” like lighting and production equipment. The church uses the space. The space uses the church’s assets. It’s civic infrastructure being rebuilt through shared resources, not transactions.
She’s careful about who else books the space. “We do understand that church does happen here.”
But careful doesn’t mean exclusive. When a Muslim group wanted to host Iftar, her answer was yes. “Even if you don’t necessarily believe the faith journey that I’m on or you don’t ascribe to it, that doesn’t exclude you.”
The central claim: “Connection is more important than convenience.”
- Not convenient to drive through January snow to gather.
- Not convenient to arrange the baptism pool setup with all the towels and mop logistics.
- Not convenient to get dressed and show up when you could watch from bed.
“We’ve put so much emphasis now on our convenience and self and my own convenience and my own comfort,” Shamena says. “And now, connection is going down, down, down that list.”
She still believes that people are good. “That’s why I allow myself to lean into connection over convenience.”
The space could sit empty on Sundays. Instead, it’s “Club Jesus” every week—a weekly reminder that optimising for everything means building nothing that lasts.
Dimitris Manoukas: Brain Gain, Not Brain Drain
Dimitris is doing three jobs simultaneously, and they’re all the same job.
He’s a PhD researcher at Panteion University studying youth engagement in collaborative workspaces.
He’s a research fellow at Politecnico di Milano, working on the Horizon “Remaking” project, which examines the territorial impact of remote work. He’s collaborating with the European Coworking Assembly on RES-MOVE Project, exploring how coworking spaces can be inclusive environments for migrants and refugees.
All roads lead to the same destination: stopping young people from leaving places that need them most.
“Peripheral areas can be closer to cities or inside a city,” Dimitris explains. “A left-behind suburb or an old warehouse area that has been abandoned.” Empty Spain. Empty France. The industrial zones where capital moved out and never came back.
Brain drain is the most serious issue these areas face.
The coworking intervention isn’t complicated. “Getting out of the house brings, one way or another, employment possibilities and civil society engagement.”
- First, could you show up?
- Second, meet people.
- Third, discover possibilities you couldn’t see from your bedroom.
“Networking, connectivity, is in the core of brain gain, which is the opposite of brain drain,” Dimitris says. The method: Reach out to youth in small communities—you know each other. Ask them what events they’d like to see. Co-design activities. Bring them into the space with professionals and policymakers. Let informal networks form.
Then comes more structured support: workshops on setting up a business, learning to work remotely—”which is also super important when it comes to youth retention. If you want someone to live in their area, you have to give them also this option.”
Two structural shifts are working in your favour: Digital skills can keep youth local. Knowledge work doesn’t require a Barcelona address anymore. The cost-of-living crisis in big cities also discourages young people from staying. Many who left during the pandemic chose to remain in rural areas.
“These places can be the mediators that bring all the threads together,” Dimitris says.
In Ireland and the UK especially, traditional community centres and youth centres are adopting coworking practices, learning to “find the perfect middle road that connects bottom-up needs with top-down expectations.”
Not gentrification. Not extraction. Economic diversification that lets people stay.
Ellie Meredith: The 25-Minute Documentary That Starts Movements
Ellie left school feeling anxious about climate change, with nowhere to put the energy. She struggled to have conversations at school “about the things that were going on outside the school gates.”
Then she found Re-Action Collective. “Finding the collective gave me permission to imagine another way of doing things, and it really has felt like a real homecoming and a remembering of what really matters in this moment.”
A filmmaker named Mike made a 25-minute documentary about her journey. It’s called Actionism, and it’s moving through the world in a deliberately inconvenient way: community screenings only. Not cinemas. Not streaming platforms.
“A community screening isn’t just about watching a film,” Ellie explains. “It’s about being together in a shared space with open hearts and curious minds to see where those connections and questionings might start to move toward something.”
She learned from 99p Films in Cornwall:
- Start with a communal feast.
- Do a mindful breathing session before the film.
- Show a complementary short film afterwards.
- Then sit in a big circle—including Ellie and Mike when they’re there—and the whole room has a conversation, not one person answering questions.
The activation ideas that work: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if…” dreaming activities where people write ideas on Post-its, then figure out together how to make it happen.
Partnering with local repair cafés—people bring clothes, bikes, electronics and mend together, “a really nice way to resist that throwaway culture.”
Visible mending workshops. Art supplies for people to respond through collaging or drawing.
“I definitely feel things on a deeper frequency than others,” Ellie says. “I don’t really know where to put any of that energy unless it’s part of collective action.”
That frequency exists in your space. The film is just the excuse to gather.
Hundreds of screenings are now taking place worldwide.
- Living rooms.
- Libraries.
- Coworking spaces.
- Anywhere people can sit together and ask: Who else cares about this stuff?
The Pattern: Infrastructure for Energy They Said Has No Value
Shamena’s faith-forward family space. Dimitris’s peripheral hubs for youth retention. Ellie’s climate action screenings.
None of these optimise for scale. They optimise for depth.
They’re building civic infrastructure in the gaps the market and the state won’t fill. Not because they’re saints. Because the gaps are where they live.
This is Jon Alexander‘s shift from Consumer to Citizen, documented in real time.
- The Consumer story says: optimise for convenience, scale or die, your energy only matters if it generates returns for shareholders.
- The Citizen story says: Your energy matters because you’re here; connection is the product, and depth beats breadth.
Shamena could stream church services and call it accessible. Dimitris could focus his research on successful urban hubs. Ellie could put Actionism on Netflix and call it impact.
Instead, they’re all building infrastructure for the thing that sustains us: showing up for each other in specific, messy, inconvenient ways.
Your coworking space is already this infrastructure.
The baptism pool on Sunday morning. The Post-it note dreaming session after the film. The young person who stays in their hometown because they found a crew at the local hub. This isn’t peripheral work. This is the centre.
The question isn’t whether to do this work. The question is whether you’re naming it.
Who This Is For
If you run a space with fewer than 150 members and have been told you’re failing because you haven’t scaled, this is for you.
If you’ve been told to be more generic to appeal to a wider audience, but specificity is your strength, this is for you.
If you care about your neighbourhood more than your brand partnerships, this is for you.
If you measure success by who finds their crew, not by how many hot desks you filled, this is for you.
The corporate coworking story says: optimise for convenience, monetise every square foot, scale quickly, and exit even faster. That story has its place. But it’s not your story.
- Your story is Shamena’s: building a kingdom business where people show up because connection matters more than convenience.
- Your story is Dimitris’s: creating spaces where young people can stay instead of leaving.
- Your story is Ellie’s: hosting screenings where people find others who care.
You don’t need 11,000 square feet to host a church. You don’t need a 338-person capacity to partner with a faith organisation. Start with one Sunday. One screening. One local partnership. The work scales through depth, not size.
You’re not failing. You’re building civic infrastructure. You’re just not optimising for the wrong metrics anymore.
If that’s you, you’re not alone. And you don’t need permission to keep building.
We’re documenting next from the Bullpen
The February 2026 London lineup for Unreasonable Connection Going Live!
Be one of 150 coworking community builders and operators who will gather to talk about citizenship, not consumerism, and building a local sustainable coworking business in an economic shitstorm and uncertainty.
Coming in November 2025 Urban MBA‘s ACTionism screening in their Old Street HQ, and look out for Marko Orel, Helga Moreno and Jeannine van der Linden will be online talking about how coworking support for Ukraine has evolved since the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.
Next Steps
1️⃣ Host an Actionism screening – Request a hosting guide at actionism.film. Pay as you feel (£100 recommended). Invite members and neighbours. Have the conversation. See what starts.
2️⃣ Join the London lineup in February – Unreasonable Connection brings together 150 operators for a day of citizenship-focused conversation. Workspace Design Show London is the same week, we’ll all be there too!
3️⃣ Map your peripheral – Who in your area has been left behind by the “knowledge economy”? How does your space reach them? Write it down. Then do one thing about it this week.
4️⃣ Clarify your specificity – What makes you unapologetically you? If you’ve been playing it safe to appeal to everyone, pick one true thing about your space and say it louder. See who shows up.
5️⃣ Connect with the guests:
- Shamena Nurse-Kingsley on LinkedIn | Cowo & Crèche,
- Dimitris Manoukas on LinkedIn | Rural Radicals | ResMove
- Ellie Meredith on LinkedIn | Reaction Collective
Shout-out to the 10+ spaces already confirmed for Actionism screenings. You’re the ones actually building this. We’re just documenting it. When you host yours, share what happened in the LinkedIn Coworking Group. The movement needs your story.