There is something about a visit to Breeze Creatives that always gets me excited. It’s hard to put my finger on it but I think its to do with the creative energy that runs through the place.
They have an interesting business model, taking short term leases on buildings that are due for demolition or regeneration and turning them into various sized workspaces for businesses. Because of their set up they can offer low rents as the building owner is allowed to reduce the non-domestic rates it pays to the council. To me Breeze occupies a pre-startup space, a vital requirement in any economy.
They allow businesses to try out their ideas without a massive overhead, a sort of Minimum Viable Product, while they combine the creative arts with other business ideas. To me the future of all business lies in collaboration and co-creation. Breeze embodies this.
It was a pleasure then to introduce a couple of friends and colleagues to Alex and Zoe who run Breeze. They come up in my conversations a lot and so I have a steady stream of people to introduce. This time it was with Simon from The Federation of Small Businesses and Connor who works at Tombola in Sunderland. I have known both for some time in various guises. I met Simon when working at Durham and I can’t really remember how Connor and I first met. Perhaps he can remind me.
I wanted Simon to visit to get an idea of the scale of the operation and the model that allows new business ideas to come to fruition. As for Connor, we have been talking about the demise of Campus North, which happened to be a hundred metres from Breeze, and I felt that this may offer an alternative. Newcastle has some great office space but finding something at the low cost end of the market, especially in the centre of town is hard.
As for me, it was just another opportunity to get excited about what they do. If you are interested then you can find out more at their website. If you need an introduction, just let me know.
Thoughts from a Guerrilla Worker 