A Space of One's Own // Part 1
This International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating female-identifying space makers. Since we launched If Lost Start Here, we’ve found again and again that many of the places that are thinking about our mental wellbeing differently have been founded by women. From initiatives that aim to balance our emotional and psychological wellbeing like Bryony Gordon’s Mental Health Mates, through to unique places of awe and wonder like Lea Redmond’s Lucky Penny Parlor, through to independent creative spaces like Alexis Joseph and Lana Porcello’s Case for Making. We’ve even covered a Poetry Pharmacy — founded by Deborah Alma. As women are raising our voices, we are also helping to shape our world in real terms.
That world is not just one that we make for ourselves. Yes, there’s a surge in interest in female-focused spaces (some of our favorites include coworking spaces like Grace Kraaijvanger’s The Hivery depicted in the main image and Molly Goodson’s The Assembly). But for the most part, these spaces created by women go beyond Virginia Woolf’s room of one’s own — a coveted space for ourselves to live an independent and creative life — but to spaces for all of us to seek out and from which we can benefit.
We’ve found that women are creating places with a purpose that can better reflect the kind of world that we thrive from inhabiting. The storefronts, initiatives, and environments that women are creating are designed to do the things we need most: build connections, contribute to healthy communities, make space for creativity, bring the relationship between our minds/ body (and sometimes souls) into focus, give us access to nature and untether us from the overwhelm of technology, and even allow for spirituality, joy, and hope.
As the world shifts, women don’t just have a voice in it, we also get to shape it, giving concrete expression to how our own needs, our own sense of space, is evolving too. Staking out physical places in the world is vitally important to what that world becomes for us and each other.
We’ve also discovered this from our conversations with women space makers; making places in the world is an act of bravery. (Take it from our friend Tiffany who just launched her women’s collective and workspace All Together Co.) It takes a huge amount of courage and commitment to actually open any physical location in the world. Think about some entry-level constraints: rising rents, a displaced consumer-driven more online, the unceasing competition for audience and platforms, and fragmented communities. Now let’s add in an almost marriage-like scenario once a space has launched: an ongoing commitment to opening and closing up, replacing milk and toilet paper, managing relationships within a business and with customers/clients/suppliers, keeping the lights on (even changing lightbulbs). And let’s just throw in the costs of build-out, inventory to get started, permits and contractors. Are you tired yet? Now do it anyway, and make it work, and thrive, and sustain yourself and others. These women are our heroes.
Over the next few months, we’ll bring you more stories from female-founded spaces, more words of wisdom about their why’s and their how’s. For now, to go into this weekend singularly celebrating women’s achievements, we’ve pulled together some of those spaces that we’re particularly excited about and some of the people behind them that we wanted to highlight. We hope you’ll find some inspiration here. We encourage you to seek out these places, as well as the others that we’ve featured in our guide, to support female-founded spaces wherever you live, and maybe even to start something of your own?
