Emilie Lashmar shared a thorough recap of GCUC UK’s last Manchester event, which she co-hosted with Georgia-Kaye Berry (from Colony).

The recap runs over the data shared by Jordan Saleh (CBRE), Ryan Jans (WeWork), and Tanya Grady (Allied London); what makes a workspace stand out by Nicola Jones (GPE), Lucy Pickavance (Phoenix Resourcing), Ana Bernardo (Work.Life), and Ben Newton (Patch); some indie-vs-big-pocket insights from Lisa Cations (JCR Advisors), Shannon Burke (managed.), Tom Almas (Wizu), Rebekah Lloyd-Beere (Landsec), and Gareth I. Jones (TownSq). Alongside workshops led by Samuel Warren (technologywithin), Manuel Conti (PONT), Claire Carpenter and George Tilbury; Lisa Quait ran the Women in Flex Luncheon. The event was then rounded out with sessions from Nicholas Drew (urbanbubble) and Sammy Dukes (Yardi) on operational intelligence and Pauline Roussel (Coworkies) and Jonathan O’Byrne on community.

Why did we highlight all the speakers above? To elevate the (many new) voices who took the stage in Manchester.

Georgia-Kaye Berry shares that after a bunch of demand for a more central location, COLONY are opening their first floor at 19 Spring Gardens – featuring private offices for 4-10 desks, meeting rooms, and 16 dedicated desks.

In an unusual move, Timothy Tiah the executive director of Colony Co-work Space (in Malaysia, not to be confused with Colony in England) shared a video about closing their original Star Boulevard location, what happened and why.

It’s a pretty refreshing way to hear from the folks running spaces, explaining to their members and wider community why some locations need to close to support the rest of the business, network and impact they can make.

Colony, a flexible workspace provider, has appointed its Operations Director, Rebecca Cox, to the role of Managing Director after three years of significant growth. Under her leadership, the company has doubled its locations, quadrupled staff size, and achieved a tenfold increase in membership. Congrats to both Colony and Rebecca!

COLONY, an operator in Manchester, UK, announces two new locations opening in 2025. This brings their network size to 8 locations across the city. The two new locations will be located in Spring Gardens and in the iconic DKNY building at 76 King Street. The former will take one floor, and the latter will start with 2 floors with an aim to take the remaining 2 floors in future phases.