Today we’d like to introduce you to Joshua Croke.
Joshua, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My personal journey has been a bit all over the place – and I consider that a good thing. I’m a very passionate person with a lot of interests, so when I was pursuing my degree it was hard for me to commit to a single major focus. I studied music & theatre, anthropology, and psychology before graduating with a self-made major at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Creative Design, Technology & Business. I started my first company, Origin Consulting, while I was a student at WPI to help support myself through school. Origin (DefineYourOrigin.com) is an innovation design and creative strategy studio that works with companies to develop new ideas, products, and brands.
Action! Worcester started with a blind lunch meeting between me and my soon-to-be-cofounder Kyla Pacheco, set up by a mutual friend. Kyla was working for one of the Worcester universities (Worcester has 9 colleges & universities, 12 in Greater Worcester with over 38,000 students) and I had recently graduated from WPI, so we both had thoughts about the higher ed landscape. We both agreed that the students at our higher ed institutions are one of the greatest assets in the city for creating a strong young professional culture and helping the city move forward.
We initially started Action! Worcester to strengthen the connectivity between students at different schools. Because of the quantity of schools in Worcester, some label Worcester a “College Town”; when we first started, we often referred to the City as a “Town with Colleges” recognizing that most institutions operated in their own campus bubbles where students didn’t really know each other across the different institutions. By connecting students across campuses, we saw an opportunity to 1) get more students downtown and out in the city during their time in school 2) increase student retention post-graduation from their involvement in the city during their tenure and 3) get students more involved in change making in the City.
Our first event, held in March 2015, was ThinkWoo, a now-annual community conversations event where we bring together the diversity of the City to discuss challenges and ideate solutions. At A!W, we use a human-centered design approach to community development. We believe you have to talk to people first and get them involved in the change conversation to truly bring about impactful, inclusive, and adopted change. This event guides our development of initiatives and helps us maintain a pulse on what residents and stakeholders are looking for from their City.
After our first year, a lot of the focus groups from ThinkWoo talked about 1) the perception of the City being more negative than positive, 2) a lack of awareness of things to do, 3) walkability and public transportation, and 4) student ideas development and the startup business community. These launched our first two initiatives; POW! WOW! Worcester 2016 (which came out of a small community-led organizing committee we put together initially dubbed “the Worcester Mural Project”), and the Idea Lab program. POW! WOW! became New England’s largest mural festival and put Worcester on an international stage in the arts world.
The activation of 15 murals in Downtown Worcester connected the district to encourage walkability and gave people a reason to come downtown. The Idea Lab program is a collaborative workspace where members of the community can develop their companies and projects and meet other innovative and entrepreneurial people in Worcester. As an organization focused on inclusive, equitable growth and access, we have an Accessible Entrepreneurship Initiative to provide a low-to-no barrier to entry services to people who want to develop their ideas and bring about change. The first phase of this initiative is our Open Work Days where we open up the Idea Lab every Wednesday from 9 am to 5 pm as free coworking for the community.
Moving into 2018, the Idea Lab has seen a significant increase in membership and was recently awarded a grant from MassDevelopment to add a learning environment to support our increased activity. Still committed to strengthening an intercollegiate ecosystem in Worcester, we have a University Membership offering at the Idea Lab to give colleges a presence downtown and space where students, faculty, and staff can come work on their ideas alongside other campuses as well as community members. We’re currently partnered with Worcester State University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute and look forward to working with more Worcester schools this year.
Action! Worcester has evolved to become an economic development organization focused on community engagement and individual empowerment. We believe that in order to catalyze change that builds strong communities, we must empower all stakeholders by providing access to education, a platform to be heard, and opportunities to create change.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has been a challenge worth overcoming. There have been ups and downs as in every story, I imagine. Every day we navigate politics, ego, and establishment, but we also get to work with inspiring people who want to bring about change. We are trying to help voices be heard that have not felt included; many who do not think their opinion or their vote matters. We’re working to create an innovation ecosystem in Worcester that will help elevate the City and are being intentional about inclusion and resident-empowerment. Sometimes I think the biggest challenge for us is that we have this vision for how to strengthen cities through stakeholder-driven change making, but we can only move as fast as we can raise funds to support our efforts.
We started Action! Worcester from nothing – we self-funded the organization because we were passionate and saw an opportunity to look at economic development through a different lens from how we’ve experienced it. But passion can pull you in like a riptide and you dedicate so much of your time to it until you realize that without sustainability, passion has a rather short shelf life. We’ve found it difficult to create a financially stable organization in the work that we have been doing, and to be honest are still working through that challenge. But we are still encouraged at where we are from where we started and remain passionate about building a future for Action! Worcester that empowers people to become changemakers in their communities.
We believe economic development needs to be inclusive and equitable and that growth needs to be intentional, and we’ve built a place-based design method to support this kind of growth. Kyla and I do not have formal education in urban planning or public administration, but we both have had experiences in the places we live where we see opportunities for improvement. And we’ve found that most people we talk to have ideas to address the challenges in their communities but do not feel that their ideas matter or will be heard because they don’t have the industry vernacular or look a certain way or feel comfortable presenting their concern and ideas in an open forum that makes one feel like they’re on trial.
Residents don’t have to know the term ‘walkability’ to know they want safe streets. They don’t have to know the economics of public transportation to feel that transportation isn’t working for them. If we can build a community that pays attention, actively listens, and works together; there is no challenge that cannot be solved — and that is what Action! Worcester is about. We want to work with people in Worcester and across the world to make inclusive and successful cities powered by vibrant and strong communities. We welcome thoughts and ideas about our approach and ways to help the organization grow.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Action! Worcester & the Idea Lab Program story. Tell us more about the business.
Action! Worcester is an economic development organization focused on community engagement and individual empowerment. We believe that in order to catalyze change that builds strong communities, we must empower all stakeholders by providing access to education, a platform to be heard, and opportunities to create change.
I think we became known in Worcester in large part because of the brand we created through social media and from Kyla and I getting involved by attending networking and city events to start a dialogue with the community about opportunities to bring about change.
For the past two years, Action! Worcester has run our Worcester Idea Lab collaborative workspace program out of 20 Franklin Street, a renovated property that used to be the home of the Telegram & Gazette newspaper. We worked with the Worcester Business Development Corporation (WBDC), the owner of the building, to bring part of this property online for incubator-style activity and acted as the space operator while building our programming, events, and member activity to support the exciting growth happening in Worcester’s downtown.
Following discussions about the available resources to the innovation ecosystem in the city and a continued effort to bring sustainability to those of us participating in this emerging growth, Action! Worcester announced a partnership with the Worcester CleanTech Incubator (WCTI) whose mission is to foster growth of new enterprises and provide space and resources for companies to propel their ideas to market. Our two organizations agreed that by partnering to share skills and resources, we can better serve our mutually aligned missions. With this partnership, Action! Worcester has relocated our organization to WCTI’s location in the Printer’s Building downtown at 44 Portland Street. This building is buzzing with activity from Technocopia’s maker space to the public radio station (90.5 FM WICN) to an exciting announcement that Arts Worcester is moving their gallery to the building as well, and we’re thrilled to expand our activity in this new space (well, new for us). Our last location at 20 Franklin Street was a great experience, and that building has incredible activity as well with a new arts space, the Worcester Popup, coming online, and a black box theatre under construction, and we hope to remain involved in the continued growth and development of that important fixture in downtown’s development.
There was originally a question regarding Industry Outlook, so I respond to that here:
In regards to the Idea Lab program; I think significant changes are starting to happen as it relates to collaborative workspaces. Coworking has been trending for the past few years and is still growing substantially in major cities and has spread into mid-sized cities and smaller communities as well. As the future of work becomes continually accessible from pretty much anywhere, these spaces provide nearby opportunities to get work done outside of your home office or in your corporate cubicle. They provide opportunities to meet people in different industries and at different companies and can encourage innovative thinking. These are the internal benefits for members that are frequently discussed. However, I think it is equally as important, especially for gateway and mid-sized cities like Worcester, to look at these spaces as economic development resources.
At two years old, the Idea Lab still has its growing pains surrounding how to make the operating model sustainable and growth-enabled. Successful (and well known) coworking companies target established innovation leaders like Boston, NYC, and San Francisco as locations to open workspaces because there is the demand, the pricing is premium, and there are a wealth of companies eager to sponsor these spaces for the exposure they receive. Worcester is still establishing itself in the innovation community and working toward attracting new and retaining existing talent in the city. I believe “the city” (as comprised of the city itself but also local businesses and economic development organizations) needs to support the Idea Lab and other organizations who are the physical spaces and thought leaders in the ecosystem to really make this focus successful.
From a future of work and socially responsible angle, I believe it will become more and more an activity of places like the Idea Lab to encourage members to think about the impact their companies and products have on the world. As a nonprofit, Action! Worcester is motivated to make the world more inclusive and sustainable and we believe that massive change stems from changes in our communities. We have an infographic on our website that talks about this opportunity and vision: https://worcesteridealab.com/future-of-coworking-2/
Where do you see your industry going over the next 5-10 years? Any big shifts, changes, trends, etc?
Collaborative workspaces are invaluable in helping to catalyze growth of innovation ecosystems. And while that community grows in mid-sized, gateway cities like Worcester, these spaces need to build partnerships that help support operations, programming, outreach and marketing, development and other activities that build the necessary buzz that will attract people within the city and outside of it to join these spaces.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I think luck or good fortune could be found in any story, but I don’t really put that much stake in it. I think the belief in luck makes people less active in getting things done and bitter about other people’s successes.
Pricing:
- Idea Lab program individual & corporate memberships (memberships as low as $125/month), please contact kate@worcesteridealab.com
Contact Info:
- Address: 20 Franklin Street
- Website: https://worcesteridealab.com/
- Phone: 774.402.0339
- Email: josh@worcesteridealab.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/actionwoo/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ActionWoo/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/worcidealab
- Other: https://twitter.com/actionwoo
Image Credit:
Lina Welle Photography, Jonathan Dana Photography, Nate Fiske Photography, Amanda Lorraine Photography
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