History

York Hackspace version history

1.0 Beta – A table or two in The Black Swan

October 2011

The first real meeting for York Hackspace was in The Black Swan on Peasholme Green.
There were few meetings at The Black Swan before the hackspace moved to version 1.0.

The Black Swan
The Black Swan

1.0 – Guppy’s Enterprise club

October 2011 to August 2015

York Hackspace version 1.0 was a small room in Guppy’s Enterprise club, a meeting venue for all kinds of clubs.
Having this space allowed us to slowly grow our membership while keeping costs to a minimum.
With very little project storage space and no space to keep larger equipment, we knew that we eventually wanted a different space.

Guppy's Enterprise Club
Guppy’s Enterprise Club

2.0 – Stonebow House (floor two)

August 2015 to December 2015

Almost completely out of the blue came an opportunity for a low-rent space of our own, in the corner of a floor of Stonebow House.
York’s “Arts Barge project” had an entire floor to sub-let to artists and creative groups.
Finally we had a space to keep equipment and tools. We knew it was only temporary, but we had a real hackspace.
It even had a 3D printer.

A corner of floor 2 in Stonebow house
This picture was taken just after we started to move in.

2.1 – Stonebow House (floor four)

December 2015 to March 2016

See this as a bug-fix release. Complications on floor two forced us to move. Fortunately we and the other Arts Barge tenants, were able to move to floor four.
Stonebow house is a fairly tall building and floor four gave us one of the best views in York. The whole floor essentially had a panoramic window with the York Minster in full view.

View from Stonebow house floor four
View from Stonebow house; flickr photo shared by choffee under a Creative Commons ( BY-SA ) license

3.0 Beta – Back to The Black Swan

March 2016 to August 2016

We knew we didn’t have long in Stonebow House, but the notice still arrived unexpectedly.
After moving out, we decided to go back to The Black Swan for our regular meetups.
With a taste of real space, we were immediately looking for a new space we could move into.

3.0 – Fulford Business Centre

August 2016 to March 2024

Huzzah! A proper non-temporary space that we can truly call ours. Just a short walk from the city centre.

As of the 15th of August 2016, we now have some office space in Fulford business centre.

A photograph of York Hackspace at Fulford Business Centre. The room is an office unit, with a large shelf unit covering most of one of the walls. There are various workstations around the room, some of them for specific tools, others just providing desk space.

4.0 – Redeness Works, 10 Redeness Street

March 2024 onwards

Wow, we grew a lot in the 7 years we spent at Fulford Business Centre. Now we’re in a space that’s nearly three times the size.