Makespace Oxford CIC

Who we are

Our mission is to revive, repurpose and transform empty and underused spaces across Oxfordshire into affordable, community-driven places. We are committed to nurturing connection and support for social enterprises, creatives, makers and fostering a more inclusive and connected local economy. 

Our agenda is spatial justice - we believe everyone has the right to safe, affordable, secure and beautiful spaces in which to work, organise and celebrate. We use meanwhile as a lever to unlock spaces, and as a catalyst to bring about long-term, community place-based renewal, building towards community ownership. Find out more at www.makespaceoxford.org

Our culture and values

Makespace Oxford is a small friendly team with a passion for community building and sustainability. We balance remote and in-office work, typically split 50/50 between in person and remote working, according to the role. We encourage working flexibly to accommodate personal responsibilities. We prioritise work-life balance and self-care because we value a healthy and happy team. 

We are passionate about being thoughtful, effective, and inclusive, and we use the ideas of Sociocracy to guide our work, placing an emphasis on self-management and learning. We work collaboratively, setting priorities and making decisions in small teams. Each of us manages our own workload and is trusted to manage their own time. Everyone is encouraged to ‘have their say’ about how the organisation operates. Sometimes that means that things feel ‘messy’ - especially when so much of what we are doing is new. We like ideas to emerge and we like to learn and improve. Everyone works hard, but makes time for one another. We appreciate each other for the individual skills, passion and expertise that we bring.

Is it the right job for you?

We are excited by people that can add new skills, perspectives and experiences to the team. We know this will help us grow as an organisation.

You will be an effective collaborator, good at listening, understanding people's needs and building capacity within the community.  You will be good at working with competing demands and comfortable with high levels of autonomy. 

You will be curious when it comes to new ways of working and keen to help build a strong and connected team.

Equality, diversity and inclusion policy

We are striving to build a strong, supportive and capable team that brings a diverse range of skills, perspectives and backgrounds together. Our recruitment process is designed to find the right person for a role and a good match for the applicant themselves. 

We want to challenge ourselves not to fall back on “traditional” ways of doing things, but to question how the design of new roles, together with an inclusive recruitment and onboarding approach, could lead us to a range of candidates who can bring something new to our team.

We recognise that systemic inequalities exist and have developed an inclusive approach to recruitment that takes positive action and lives up to our commitments to EED&I and racial justice. We actively encourage applications from global majority candidates; we aim to have a staff and board team that fully represent the communities we serve.