The City of Fremantle and local co-working space provider fSpace are pleased to announce the launch of an innovative new business incubator program to help small businesses within the creative industries sector.

The City of Fremantle and fSpace Creative Industries Program offers qualified businesses three months of subsidised workspace at fSpace, a vibrant co-working space located in the heart of Fremantle.

To be eligible, a business must satisfy a number of criteria, the most important being that they operate within the creative industries sector. Architecture, IT & software/computer services, design (graphic, fashion or product); and film, TV & video are just a few examples of creative industries.

The program will help small business owners looking to take the next step by subsidising their workspace costs and providing them with an opportunity to work alongside and collaborate with other successful business owners and professionals.

“The City views the continuing emergence of creative industries in Fremantle as a key driver in Fremantle’s ongoing rejuvenation,” said Fremantle Mayor Brad Pettitt.

“The partnership with fSpace is a great fit for us and we look forward to being able to help kick-start some innovative local businesses that hopefully go on to become industry leaders,” said Fremantle Mayor Brad Pettitt.

Sabine Albers, owner of fSpace, said she was excited to be partnering with the City to help creative businesses.

“Each month, people come into fSpace wanting to start their own business but struggle with the financial commitment to make a go of it,” Sabine said.

“This program will provide the opportunity for people to work alongside some fantastic entrepreneurs at fSpace and will help get innovative business ideas off the ground or take an existing venture to the next level”

The program is available to new business start-ups as well as existing businesses looking to develop and grow in Fremantle.

We had some great responds and media exposure about our new partnership with the City of Fremantle. In the last 6 months some great new businesses have joined fSpace. Great collaboration is happening and the energy and buzz is awesome.

The news has gone across several media channels and has helped getting fSpace out there. Keep spreading the word and come see us to experience some of the buzz yourself.

See you soon!
Sabine

fSpace is excited about the new trendy Melbourne style cafe in our very own little courtyard.

On top of being the newest addition to our building and serving up fine quality coffee and healthy, great tasting food, former MasterChef contestant Wade Drummond is also embarking on a unique new project in 2016 tackling nutritional education in WA schools and empowering children to feed themselves and their families.

Wade’s Cooking For A Generation Project aims to launch between February and April in the new year and will be targeted towards students between 10-12 years old in lower socio-economic schools around WA without access to things such as market gardens or proper food education.

They will lead the project which will be accepting volunteers with anything from basic to advanced cooking experience to help educate school children around Perth.

Volunteers will teach groups of students how to prepare and cook a dish over the course of an eight week period. By the end of that time, volunteers will have managed to teach kids the basics of nutrition and how to cook a decent meal.

“Ideally at the end of the project they will be able to make a simple meal for themselves and their family.”

Wade spoke to fSpace about his concern over how many children live off a diet of fast food and don’t actually have a clue what a fruit or vegetable even look likes.

“It’s important to teach kids how to make healthy food choices,” he said.

“How are they going to choose to eat healthy food they haven’t seen or tried them before?”

“I want to empower kids to feed themselves the right thing.”

The Leake St. Cafeteria owner also mentioned the fantastic local support he was receiving for the project after reaching his $15,000 Kickstarter goal with lots of people still hoping to contribute.

The plan is to add components of the project where if volunteers had even only basic food knowledge, then they could still take that and teach it at a school over the course of an eight week period.

“By the end of that time, volunteers will hopefully have managed to teach these kids the basics of nutrition and how to cook.”

“Ideally at the end of that they can make a simple meal for themselves and their family,” he said.

Wade is currently loving his recent sea-change living and working full-time from Freo. With the amazing produce from right next door’s grocer Kakulas Sisters, this ex-MasterChef contestant assured us he is never short of inspiration.

“The people curious enough to venture down the back of Kukulas or down a little secret laneway on Leake St. to find you are already willing to try something new,” he said.

If you like to know more about this awesome project stop by for a coffee or healthy bite to eat and a chat at Leake St. Cafeteria by walking through Kukula’s Sister on Market St. or following the yellow painted line through the alley way on Leake St.

**More about Wade’s Cooking for a Generation project, click on the link below:
**Wade’s Cooking For A Generation KickStarter 

fSpace is a hub for workers in the creative industries, eager to avoid the procrastination traps one might face working from home.Our desks tend to attract people seeking a better atmosphere to achieve higher levels productivity and greater time management throughout their businesses. To any entrepreneur or small business owner, efficiency, productivity and time management are factors you just can’t afford to ignore.

So here at fSpace, we’ve compiled a list of time saving, productivity boosting and idea sorting apps to help you take over the world.

Best of all, they’re free!

Dropbox

With over 400 million people around the world  on Dropbox and over 100,000 businesses on Dropbox Business, there is no better or more secure online storage option that is available for free. Developed by Arash Ferdowsi and Drew Houston in 2007, Dropbox became established as a fantastic online storage system to place and arrange files that can be accessed anywhere at anytime online via cloud technology. The app also lets you share files to multiple people and work on files simultaneously so its great for those tasks everyone in the office needs access to.

³⁰⁄₃₀

Developed in 2012, ³⁰⁄₃₀ is a fantastic time management app which creates small customised to-do lists which require the input of a time limit timer in 5-30 min intervals. This app stems from the theory that the human brain is best focused for 30 minutes increments with short breaks in between and is designed to encourage this work style. Known as the Pomodoro technique, this style of work has been used by students and workers to efficiently complete tasks since it’s development in the 1980’s. Students particularly favour both this technique and app as it is also helpful for retaining information during study. Of course for all you micro-managers, no one is stop you planning out your whole day on the timer.

Evernote

Evernote is a highly recommended note system organiser which can store everything from pictures, sticky notes, audio notes, web pages, PDFs and more. Founded by Stephan Pachikov, the Evernote web service launched on June 24, 2008 and reached 11 million users by 2011. Like Dropbox, it’s storage system is via the cloud so can be accessed anywhere, from all your devices, but the best thing about this app is its handy tag system which lets you search your notes so you never lose information. It can even scan your pictures or notes to read and transcribe your handwriting.

Ifttt

If This Then That (IfTTT), is an app, for easier use of all your other apps. Created in December 14, 2010 by Linden Tibbets, Ifttt is like a digital personal assistant that can be programmed to respond to certain requests. For example, if an article appears matching your Google search, you are able to preset Ifttt to then save it to Evernote. This app allows you to create simple connections between your platforms, which can be voice controlled, location based and will help you finally gain control over all those out of time consuming apps and organise your work or business with ease.

Trello

Last but not least is the staff here at fSpace’s favourite app. Trello is  used to show a wide variety of different projects and tasks and allows multiple user interactivity for project collaborations and working abroad. You and a selected team of work colleagues can all access the same trello-board where projects are displayed effectively and aesthetically through an interactive board system with attachable cards. Developed in 2014, Trello brings together all the advantages of a social media with your peers at work in a network with the efficiency of a work\activities calendar you all share.

What apps do you use to help with your businesses?

Click here to see enlarged map

Here at fSpace, we aim to make our members and guests as happy and productive as possible.

With over 5,000 car park spots hiding in and around town, Fremantle has plenty of affordable parking. To make the navigation easier, we thought we’d map some out to help you always locate a place to leave your car at an affordable price.

ALL DAY PARKING
Fremantle has many larger car parks equipped with security, surveillance and other cars to keep yours company while you’re at work.

fSpacers love parking at Point Street car park. There’s always space in this multi-level covered carpark and your car will be nice and cool at the end of the day too. There’s a flat fee at any time you come in and out of $8 and they are open from 7am to 7.30pm each day.

Our great all day parking spots we recommend are:

1. *Point Street Parkade:* Covered parking, all day rate $8 or $2.00 per hour
2. Coles/Woolworths Parkade: Covered parking, all day rate $9 or $2.00 per hour (First hour free!)
3. Victoria Quay (D, B, C and E-Shed): Uncovered parking All day rate $7 and 3 hour max $2 per hour Fri-Sun at E-Shed.
4. Queensgate: Covered parking All day rate $8.80 (early bird before 10am) $1.50 per hour,(142.50\month).
5. The Round House: Uncovered parking (limited bays) All day rate $8.90.
6. Collie Street: Covered parking All day rate $8 (early bird before 10am) $3.50 per hour.
7. Queen Street: Uncovered parking All day rate $12 (early bird before 10am) $8 per hour.

FREE PARKING
If your opting for a quick stop-off, pop-in visit to town or to drop something off at fSpace, there is free parking in Freo. You will find 15 min drop off zones and other 30 min bays scattered throughout the many side streets in and around our office space on Market Street.

• Coles/Woolworths Parkade 1 hour (first hour free)
• Market Street 15 minute drop off zone in front of the Post Office.
• High Street (west of Market Street).
• Adelaide Street (between Parry and Queen Street) for 30 mins.
• Fremantle street parking is free from 1 am to 9 am

**PAID STREET PARKING
**Fremantle has affordable street parking options:

• Markets Carpark: (End of Parry Street) $1.70 per hour (no all day rate).
• Short, Leake, High, Cantonment Street, Elder Place, Phillimore Street: $2.70 per hour.
• Market Street: 2 hour max $2 per half hour.
  
  

DID YOU KNOW?

In Fremantle you can park all day in a covered parkade for less than 3 hours in Perth!

Other Australian City Rates:

Brisbane: $27.94 per hour.**
Sydney:** $26.72 per hour.
Melbourne: $17.08 per hour.
Perth: $4.68 per hour.
Adelaide: $4.17 per hour.
Canberra: $2.84 per hour.
Hobart: $0.50 per hour (almost 60 times cheaper than Brisbane).

fSpace’s Sabine was invited to guest lecture to business students last week at Notre Dame’s Fremantle campus about her experiences operating a local small business and how social media has effected her career.

Approximately 25 young students huddled around computers and desks were eager to examine Sabine’s portfolio of inspiring published images and to hear first hand what it was like running two small businesses in today’s digital media landscape.

Talking about her time spent studying photographic design in the Netherlands and traveling the world as a professional photographer before arriving in Sydney, Sabine recalled coming to Australia 11 years ago with no plan, contacts, connections or social media.

She was able to successfully develop her client base in Sydney over three years primarily through face to face meetings and other traditional methods before again moving to Western Australia in 2009 to start all over again, for a second time.

Sabine pointed out the stark difference in business environments between eastern states’ cities such as Melbourne or Sydney to Perth and it’s remote markets which inevitably forced her to rely more heavily on social media as a way to source new clients in WA.

“_It was actually that sense of isolation which created fSpace,__”_ 

Sabine explained how heavily she initially relied upon social media in the creation of fSpace which was set up in Fremantle’s town centre.

However, she was also quick to point out focusing too much on social media could be challenging.

_“Social media is fun to do, but it can be risky., if it’s not done right, it can hurt your business._  _I have never had anyone come into fSpace and sign up, saying they heard of us from Facebook._”

She said techniques such as word of mouth and referral were still the primary way people found out about fSpace.

To conclude the talk, Sabine raised an important question for students to consider regarding whether it was either more beneficial to invest time and money into learning new social media technologies and producing new content, or to use these resources and invest them into traditional marketing techniques which are proven to be effective.

Ultimately, chatting with Sabine gave students a fantastic opportunity to see how the social media skills they are currently studying translate to the real business world for a local small business owner.

Word & Image by Heath Werrett – fSpace Media