Mill building open day

2015.12.03 — Andy Wilson

I guess you could say that Dom and I have a bit of a love affair with the Mill Building. We worked out that it’s been at least 5 years since we first set up in the roof of the building with this great overhang of the atrium that we nicknamed The Jetty.

A couple of years in I was having a break on the bean bags, flicking through a mag one the guys had bought in. There was an article in there about co-working and the light bulb lit up in my head that a co-working space would be perfect for the empty office 1 floor down.

Racing downstairs I discovered the room still untenanted, and after several chats, beers, weeks and spreadsheets later Dom and I opened Parliament Co-working.

Three years later the love affair is still going strong, we love our space and the building as a whole. Parliament has been fully tenanted for 18 months now and a few months ago we started investigating ways we could grow.

We’ve thrown a lot of thoughts about, and as always, the hardest part about growing is determining if there’s actually a market for it.

Dom and I are pretty keen on building environments that create the ability for individuals and businesses to collaborate, and share knowledge - sounds a bit wanky but the truth is that these thing do actually help your business grow. We also like the idea of bringing together different personalities and desires, as it helps shake things up and keeps you open minded about work/life/stuff.

For that reason we decided to explore the idea of a Parliament Art Space, which could bring a collective of artists in to the building for the first time. This could add a very cool dynamic to the Mill, mixing art with business can be really interesting… you only have to look at Mona.

So what’s this got to do with an open day? Well, just like Parliament Co-working, Dom and I don’t really do anything before having several chats, downing beers and building spreadsheets… research basically.

So that’s where the idea of having a Open Day popped up and it was great… we had 30 + people come through the building and the response was really encouraging.

We haven’t decided on anything completely, but safe to say there may be an announcement about an Art Space on the waterfront soon…ish.

For any up dates about any our progress with this concept just hit up the newsletter.