Five years ago today, @AndyReevo and I signed the lease on the beautiful space for @ImpactHubBrum, the Walker Building, a rich history, & beautiful restoration of the space in the heart of the creative quarter & the cities designated 'Social Enterprise Quarter', it was ...
.. expensive, & they demanded a huge deposit, but having been gloriously thrown out of Millennium Point a few months early, and with a eclectic and inspired public movement, and our huge inspiration from @impacthub_oak, we knew the time was right to start, & build our dreams ...
... we got together a deposit, accepted the rent and got going. The basics were there in the spaces, they weren't falling apart, but they were dusty, the walls weren't sealed, there was no electricity, hot water, glazing, doors or anything other than a blank canvas ..
... in many ways perfect. I will put my hands up to say we didn't get expert survey / dilapidations advice at this time, but had legal support and did everything in the correct manner. This is what the space looked like before. Dusty, dark and a good blank canvas. 
This is what it looked like upstairs and outside. So, it was a beautifully renovated old factory with history, restored quite nicely, but nothing ground breaking. Quotes for the full fit out can in between £200 - £250,000 for the whole 6,500 sq ft, to the spec we co - designed ..
... we knew that was far more than we had, but with the incredible civic movement, crowdfunding raise and support from Barrow Cadbury, Vanti, many other and your support we co - built a stunning award winning, fully spec'ed out office space with furniture for just under £100k.
The work everyone put in, was truly mind blowing. It showed us the energy, power, unity, and potential of community making processes, with a bit more design this definitely could have been a really great skills programme.
We built a sensational award winning space together. We paid the rent, the service charge, the huge costs the landlord snuck in from all over the estate, with no improvement to building, courtyard, or actually even tiny bit of care of the work we were all doing there.
Not just us, but any of the tenants, there was never communication about anything of interest, just bills, chasing of bills and more bills. We acted as the building concierge, mail receivers, liaised with all their contractors as they had no-one on site & we had a front door.
The stunning courtyard and space under our arches, could have been 100s of amazing things for creative communities in Digbeth, but car parking spaces sold for more money, so the landlords agent was never interested.
Let's remember that the landlord's was actually based in Dubai, with their company in an off shore tax haven, with a managing agent who was based in Oxford, that we dealt with, for bills, bills and more bills. Some people at least send their customers a Christmas card at least.
The lovely @jimmyrogers did a mural of the research we did about the history of the building, we even sourced an old item, that was made in the Walker Building factory in the past.
The landlords agent couldn't care less about it, they actually asked us to paint over it when we left.
When it came to the end, after more than £500,000 of rent alone over the years, the landlord chased us incessantly for bills, no thanks, no its been great having you here, no you encouraged thousands of people to the building over the years, no nothing.
In fact they completed lots of works of windows in our demise and added them to the service charge to ensure, we paid before we left (they were fine). With 2 months to go, they presented us with a huge dilapidations bill of £138,000 double what the fit out cost.
This was absurd, and we certainly didn't have this kind of money. We received lots of advice from the great and good about bankrupting the company & disappearing, as well as lots of good supportive help from dilaps experts and surveyors, about how absurd this was.
It also made no sense, leave the space in good order, a good blank canvas I can understand, but the wasteful not regenerative processes or ripping out everything good glazing, doors, electrics, wifi wires, printers, high quality AV, sinks, kitchens, just for the next tenant ..
.. to come and do the same thing is absurd and totally wasteful. We saw the tenant next door do this exact same thing over 3 months. We decided we wouldn't behave like the system, we would come together as always, as a community & leave the space better than we found it, & ...
... behave like the corporate citizens we believe should exist in the world. Not for the landlord, or the agent, who literally couldn't give a shit about us, & is incentivised the cream us of everything we have, but for ourselves, for the team, for the sake of integrity & for ...
.. an example of how we should behave as a city. Thank you for all stepping up with us once again in the pack down as you did in the set up, you are al, glorious, & for @exsanguinator and @gabysslave who got us going and super organised.
It shouldn't be like this, but you showed us what the power of community, of what citizenship looks like, how we can repurpose materials, recycle and be regenerative to as much a possible, gave homes to lots of the furniture, & showed in practice a different world is possible.
We certified the electrics, left the beautiful electrics, glazing, blinds, wall sealant, coffee bar and gave it all a spruce, because it would be absurd to rip this out. Thank you for doing this with us. Our surveyor today was WOW'ed and in disbelief about the £138,000 bill.
