Snezana Nikolic trained in haute couture. For years she made ball gowns, the kind worn by politicians’ wives, before she set up her own business, Y Kairos, with help from our Start Your Own Enterprise course. Now she makes heirloom children’s clothes from organic and upcycled fabrics, sells beautiful vintage womenswear, and turns out the handmade lace scrunchies and upcycled cashmere gloves that, honestly, the whole of GLOWS has a soft spot for. You’ll find her stall at Herne Hill Market and at Crystal Palace.
Here’s the thing though. None of that started with a desk. It started with somewhere to belong while she built it. And that’s what an affordable creative workspace really is, far more than four walls and some wifi.
A desk is never just a desk
When you’re starting out on your own, the hardest part often isn’t the work. It’s doing it alone. Working from the kitchen table sounds fine until it’s month three and you’ve not had a proper conversation about your business with anyone who gets it.
The research backs this up, and it surprised even the people who did it. When researchers at the University of Michigan studied people in shared workspaces, they found levels of thriving that approached an average of six on a seven-point scale, at least a point higher than people working in regular offices. The finding was so unexpected they had to go back and check the data. What made the difference wasn’t the building. It was being around other people, having the freedom to work your own way, and feeling like you could be yourself.
That’s the bit a spreadsheet never quite captures. The encouragement on a slow week. The maker at the next bench who’s solved the exact problem you’re stuck on. The quiet sense that you’re not mad for trying.
We’re Building Something A Little Different -And That’s Intentional.
You can get a hot desk in plenty of glossy buildings in London. We love that those exist. But they’re not really built for the person we’re built for.
GLOWS, our workspace in Tulse Hill, is small on purpose. It’s for founders who can’t stretch to corporate coworking prices, who’d feel a bit out of place in those rooms anyway, who need somewhere close to home because there are children to collect and lives to run, and who need affordable space to actually keep their stock and their materials, not just park a laptop. None of that is a lesser version of a workspace. For the people we work with, it’s the version that makes starting possible at all.
And it matters that it’s ours, run by people who know every member by name. Magdalen, who runs GLOWS, puts it better than I can. “To me, GLOWS is not a job but more a vocation,” she says. “I look forward to coming every week to be with my wonderful, talented makers. I feel so lucky to spend three days a week with them.”
Especially if you make things
If you work in the creative industries, affordable space isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the whole game, and it’s getting harder to find.
The creative industries are no small corner of the economy. They contributed £124 billion to the UK in 2023 and grew by 4.6 per cent between 2023 and 2024, and of the 2.4 million people working in them, almost a third are self-employed. London leans on them more than most places, with creative industries making up 12.2 per cent of the capital’s economy. Yet the spaces those self-employed makers depend on keep disappearing. It’s such a concern that the Mayor of London recently put a further £2.2 million into reversing the decline in artist studios, with Lambeth among the boroughs sharing the funding.
Tulse Hill sits right in the middle of that. And what GLOWS does for makers is something we’ve genuinely not seen done quite like this anywhere else.
Take Only Old School Goods, run by Miles and Sean, two young dads and musicians who turned a shared love of old-school toys, comics, and books into a real business, starting with £100 each. They came to us recommended by our previous tenants, Regal Rags London, who’d gone to school with Miles in Brixton and were leaving to open their first vintage shop in Peckham. Miles and Sean are also part of our childcare pilot, because we know that for a lot of parents, the barrier to building something isn’t ambition, it’s whether the practical bits of life leave any room for it.
What it all adds up to
There’s a bigger picture here too, and it’s part of why we treat this as social impact work, not just lovely stories.
When someone moves from looking for work into running a viable business of their own, the gain isn’t only theirs. The Federation of Small Businesses has argued that helping more people make that move can bring down the benefits bill over the longer term, and that the system as it stands can financially suffocate the very people trying to take that step. The catch is that self-employment only works when the support is real. A desk on its own won’t do it. Affordable space, alongside mentoring and a community that has your back, is what turns a precarious gamble into a business that lasts.
That’s the whole reason a place like GLOWS is so hard to replace. For the founders who find it hardest to get a foot in the door, it’s often the only door that opens.
Come and see it for yourself
If you’re building something, especially if you make things, and you’ve outgrown the kitchen table or you’re tired of doing it alone, come and have a look at GLOWS. Book a visit, meet Magdalen and the makers, and see whether it’s the room you’ve been needing. The link’s in our bio, and we’d love to show you round.
