Inspiration Space began as a place to breathe new life into old ways of working: useful, interesting and considerably less corporate.
What started as a room in Surrey grew into founder support, practical learning, creative experiments and conversations about how work could work better for more people.
Inspiration Space · Surrey
CHAPTER 1
In 2018, Inspiration Space opened its doors in Surrey with a simple idea: create somewhere for people to learn, work, eat, experiment and gather—without judgement, stale pastries or the pressure to pretend they had it all figured out.
People came with ideas, experience and ambition. Conversations became collaborations. People shared what they knew and asked for help with what they did not. We took the work seriously; ourselves, not so much.
Summer party · 2018
Networking at Inspiration Space · 2018
Digital enterprise hubs launch · October 2019
Guildford Hub Launch · November 2019
CHAPTER 2
By 2020, Inspiration Space was already growing beyond one room, with enterprise hubs taking shape across Surrey and Hampshire. When in-person gathering stopped, we moved online quickly to keep founders connected, supported and moving forward.
The questions changed too. People were not looking for abstract inspiration. They needed practical help: how to find customers, price work, shape an offer, manage cash flow and decide what to do when the plan stopped behaving like the plan.
With enterprise hubs already underway, Inspiration Space moved online and found new ways to keep people connected beyond Surrey.
New Beginnings brought practical entrepreneurship learning, peer exchange and one-to-one support into a format designed for real life. Across six cohorts, New Beginnings formed part of 10,000+ hours of direct education, peer learning and mentoring for founders and small-business owners. More than 100 people took part, and the programme achieved a 90% completion rate.
Through Carbon Literacy and the Low Carbon Accelerator, founders and teams explored how to understand emissions, make credible commitments and build businesses that considered people, planet and profit.
CHAPTER 3
By this point, Inspiration Space had built programmes, commissioned experts, tested tools, interviewed founders and supported hundreds of people building businesses.
It had also become clear that not every useful question needs a cohort, a course or a lengthy workshop to answer it.
As the online world grew noisier, the focus shifted towards making more of the useful work accessible, reducing unnecessary friction and creating practical resources people could use when they needed them.
We also started finding reasons to gather in person again. The annual Not Christmas Lunch became one of them: a reminder that good conversations, interesting people and a decent meal can still be useful business infrastructure.
Future Fit Teams · Imperial College London
The annual Not Christmas Lunch
Co-working and climbing · 2024
Chapter 4 — 2026 and beyond
Years of programmes, conversations, experiments and mistakes have left us with something worth carrying forward: useful knowledge, hard-won judgement and a remarkable constellation of people.
Today, Inspiration Space is a free business library and trusted directory for founders, freelancers and self-starters building independent working lives. Alongside the Library, we help organisations build stronger communities, programmes, partnerships and events. Our wider world also includes house of hopium, a home for gatherings and good conversations.
The Inspiration Space Library is free to browse, with practical guidance, tools, founder stories and trusted recommendations for the decision in front of you.
We help organisations build stronger communities, programmes, partnerships and events through practical strategy, good questions and experienced judgement.
house of hopium is for good conversations, bold ideas and the occasional reason to leave the house: salons, supper clubs, field trips and gatherings that are better for being in the room.
A letter from the founder
I started Inspiration Space because building something of your own can be lonely, confusing and considerably messier than the version people tell afterwards.
Since 2018, I have watched the tools change, the language change and the amount of advice become frankly ridiculous.
AI can surface an answer in seconds. What it cannot decide is what matters to you, what fits your circumstances or which trade-off you are willing to make.
Those questions still need context, judgement and occasionally another human being across the table.
That is why Inspiration Space now focuses on making useful business knowledge easier to find and use: practical resources, clear explainers, useful tools and trusted recommendations for people making their own way.
We are keeping what has always mattered: useful knowledge shared generously, honest thinking when the answer is complicated, and room for interesting people to connect when it matters.
There is no such thing as finished in business. You remain unfinished—or else you die.
Liana
Explore the free Library for practical guidance, tools and founder stories—or browse the Directory when you need help choosing a tool, service or specialist support.
2018–2019
2020–2022
2023–2025
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