Shareable - In 2008, Boston-based user experience designer Benji Mauer was feeling the isolation of working from home. He and his friend Benjamin Spear decided to rent an office together, but they couldn’t find one small enough. Rather than give up, they decided to get a few more people onboard and rent a larger one. They found an old industrial space with “a lot of character.” They opened the doors and started working there two months later. They called it Ad Hoc Boston. It was the precursor to Make Shift Boston, a coworking space run by a member collective of 10-15 people with a strong focus on creativity and social justice.
Members of Make Shift Boston, which is located in a former radical bookstore in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood, now include writers, filmmakers, developers, designers, playwrights, artists, and more. Among the social justice issues they’re working on are net neutrality, food insecurity, the prison industrial complex, capital punishment, supporting local fisherman in sustainable practices, black radical projects, political plays, and supporting nonprofits.
“We really care about who we share space with,” says Mauer. “The culture we have right now is pretty precious and awesome.”
To become a member of Make Shift Boston you have to be admitted by full consensus of the current members through an application, an interview process, and a free trial month. Once admitted, members join one of the various committees, have full decision-making power in the space, and can host events and “do a lot of other cool stuff.” For Mauer, this is what coworking is all about.
“The spirit of coworking, to me,” he says, “is people who want to work with other folks in a coworking-style situation—coming together, of their own volition, to make a space that is their own and supports the work they want to do in the world.”
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