Episode Summary

“We are in a space now where we can get really imaginative about how we utilise resources and how we change the way we’re looking at money.”

Tilley Harris spent a decade documenting what doesn’t show up in spreadsheets.

As co-founder of AKOU, she’s obsessed with social capital—the invisible currencies exchanged every day in coworking spaces that somehow never make it into impact reports or funding decisions.

Trust. Connection. Knowledge sharing. Emotional support.

The kind of value that keeps communities alive but doesn’t fit neatly into quarterly returns.

This conversation starts where most coworking discussions end: at the uncomfortable truth that local authorities can’t see what’s actually happening in community spaces.

Redbridge has the highest number of microbusinesses of any London borough, yet it still can’t determine if coworking matters.

Meanwhile, Lewisham’s using spaces like Faceworks to support refugees arriving with nothing, building economic pathways through community connections.

Bernie and Tilley delve into ecosystem winning—a concept that sounds corporate but holds a radically different meaning. It’s about collective access to opportunity rather than individual survival. It’s the opposite of monoculture, requiring the messy complexity of diverse voices and contributions that don’t all look the same.

The tension here is real: coworking operators are building thriving ecosystems in their neighbourhoods whilst simultaneously struggling to articulate their value to the people holding budgets.

They’re creating social capital daily—through introduced freelancers who end up collaborating, through emotional support during burnout, and through knowledge exchanges that occur over coffee—but there’s no agreed-upon system for measuring or documenting these invisible currencies.

Tilley brings a photographer’s eye to data, looking for the stories playing out beneath the surface. Before you can change how resources flow, you need a year of self-care and stress-shedding to get people’s nervous systems calm enough to imagine differently. That’s what she’s learned working with Lambeth micro-service providers through the Walcott Foundation.

This episode is for coworking operators who know they’re making an impact but can’t quite explain it in ways that get them in the room where decisions happen. It’s for community builders exhausted from feeling like they’re the only ones grinding away in their neighbourhood.

And it’s for anyone wondering why coworking spaces matter more than ever, whilst simultaneously being completely overlooked by local government.

You’ll leave with language to describe the value you create, a connection to others building similar ecosystems, and a clearer picture of what’s possible when we stop trying to fit community impact into financial frameworks that were never designed to capture it.

Timeline Highlights

* [00:04 ] Bernie’s opening: hundreds of people starting projects in every neighbourhood, and how coworking spaces are replacing community centres

* [01:38 ] Tilley defines AKOU’s mission: “obsessed with social capital and networks, showing people the magic that social capital can create”

* [02:53 ] Ecosystem winning explained: “working as a collective to access more opportunities together”

* [04:55 ] Bernie names the tension: “What’s the difference between a winning ecosystem and a clique?”

* [06:27 ] Tilley on diversity: “For a thriving ecosystem, you need diversity. Monoculture forests are part of the climate change issues”

* [09:24 ] The invisible currencies revelation: social capital, creative capital, emotional support, data—all exchanged but never documented

* [12:49 ] Why now matters: “We’re at a really exciting time... on the brink of our completely new industrial revolution with AI”

* [15:38 ] Bernie on the intangible magic of real-life connection: stretching imaginations about what coworking can do

* [19:13 ] The golden share concept: giving the environment a seat at the board table

* [22:54 ] Tilley’s Walcott Foundation project: 12 months of self-care funding before service providers could even think about resource allocation

* [28:19 ] The recognition gap: “Is there enough celebration of what coworking spaces achieve despite the struggle?”

* [30:34 ] Bernie’s example: Redbridge has the highest number of microbusinesses in London, but still can’t see why coworking matters

* [31:59 ] Real impact examples: Faceworks supporting refugees, Urban MBA’s two-year relationship-building with the local community

* [33:34 ] The invitation: London Coworking Assembly bringing 150 community builders together for deep conversation

The Value That Doesn’t Show Up in Reports

Every coworking space operator knows this feeling: you’re changing lives daily, but when you try to explain your impact to a council officer or potential funder, the language falls apart.

Tilley Harris has been chasing this problem for ten years. What started as photojournalism—capturing invisible stories—evolved into data work when she realised photographs only take you so far in conversations about resource allocation.

The people making decisions about where money flows can’t see social capital, so they don’t fund it. They can’t measure trust exchanges, so they don’t value them.

The irony is brutal: coworking spaces are some of the most capital-rich environments in their neighbourhoods, just not in the currency that counts on spreadsheets. A freelancer gets introduced to a potential collaborator. Someone going through burnout finds emotional support over coffee.

A new arrival in the country accesses a network that leads to their first UK client. These exchanges occur dozens of times daily in spaces such as Urban MBA, Faceworks, and Space4.

But try putting that in a funding application. Try explaining to Redbridge Council, which has one of the highest concentrations of microbusinesses in London, that coworking infrastructure might be a worthwhile investment.

Bernie’s watched consultants submit multiple reports making this case. The response remains: maybe, we’ll think about it. Is this really necessary?

Meanwhile, Waltham Forest, Islington, and Lewisham have worked it out. They’ve connected the dots between supporting local coworking spaces and keeping revenue in the borough whilst building community resilience.

They’ve realised that when you create infrastructure for freelancers and microbusinesses to connect, you’re not just providing desks—you’re building economic pathways and social safety nets that weren’t there before.

Ecosystem Winning vs Problem Solving

Tilley introduces a concept that sounds corporate but means something radically different in practice: ecosystem winning.

The social sector defaults to problem-solving. Understandable—there are genuine problems that need to be solved. But when you’re constantly in problem-solving mode, you only see problems. You lose the ability to spot possibilities and opportunities. You lose the sense that you have choices.

Ecosystem winning invites a different question: how do we win more together rather than each struggling individually to overcome obstacles?

Bernie immediately spots the danger: “What’s the difference between a winning ecosystem and a clique?” It’s a crucial distinction.

London’s full of coworking spaces that opened in slightly rough neighbourhoods, attracting friendly people from nice areas who liked the cheap desks, and created thriving communities that somehow never included anyone from the actual neighbourhood in which they’re located.

Tilley’s answer comes from ecology: thriving ecosystems require diversity. Monoculture forests contribute to climate change. Real resilience comes from complexity and messiness, from different types of contributions that don’t all look the same.

This means changing what we value. Financial capital has dominated for so long that we’ve forgotten how to recognise other forms of wealth. What if we acknowledged creative capital—knowledge and skill exchanges happening without a price tag? What if emotional support were considered a form of currency?

What if data exchanges, or the trust built through consistent showing up, were recognised as valuable contributions to the ecosystem?

These aren’t abstract concepts. They’re happening in every coworking space, every day. The challenge is making them visible to people who only know how to measure what fits in balance sheets.

The Twelve-Month Stress Shed Before Strategy

Tilley’s work with the Walcott Foundation reveals something most impact programmes miss: you can’t strategise your way out of burnout.

The Foundation aimed to enhance its grant distribution process to microservice providers in Lambeth. The objective was to fund activities that genuinely make a difference rather than those that merely look impressive in reports.

Sensible objective. But when they started talking to the service providers, they discovered something else needed to happen first.

These organisations were struggling. Stress, burnout, and defence mechanisms had accumulated from years of under-resourcing and over-asking. They couldn’t think creatively about resource allocation because their nervous systems were stuck in survival mode.

So Tilley’s team did something unusual: they spent twelve months just providing small pots of money for self-care. For teams. For in