Meaning and soul' : co-working, creative career and independent co-work spaces

In recent times, with the rise of freelancing, there has been a spectacular global growth in co-working and co-work spaces. In an era when neoliberalism and digital communications threaten to disperse and isolate immaterial labourers, the rise of co-working demonstrates the residual power of modernist work habits, such as the desire to separate the public and private, and to be part of a workplace community. This chapter explores the emergence of co-working as both a discursive category and a concrete social arrangement. It draws on data from interviews with convenors of independent co-work spaces in three cities—Ho Chi Minh City, Sydney and Reykjavik—and argues that those who set up and convene such spaces do so not primarily for economic reasons, but from a genuine commitment to the ethical principles of co-working: collaboration, mentorship and skill-sharing. However, co-work centres also provide creative workers who own or are employed in such centres with a ‘side-hustle’, allowing them to both diversify their working lives and supplement their precarious incomes as freelancers. Thus, for these people, co-working becomes part of the improvised pathway of the creative career.