PlayPen

General information

We know from experience that as a parent with a young child finding flexible childcare and a few hours free to get on with work can be hard.

So we hope that our new unique project, PlayPen, a ‘pop-up’ coworking session set in a homely café/workspace just meters from a top quality crèche, will offer real value for freelance and self-employed parents looking for time and space away from their child to work on a project or new business idea. And in the spirit of all coworking ventures, we hope that PlayPen will also provide a fun and useful opportunity for working parents to connect.

Launching with two trial sessions in June/July at the Paper & Cup café and crèche at the St Pauls Way Community Centre in Mile End, we hope that PlayPen will soon become a weekly cowork&crèche session.

PlayPen has been set up by working mum Leo Wood, who has previously launched two small and friendly co-working spaces in east London: Winkley Studios in Bethnal Green and Cooks Yard in Stepney Green.

Our two free trial sessions will take place on Friday 26th June (10am-12noon) and Thurs 2nd July (1pm-3pm), and have spaces available for up to 6 parents to join us. It is then our hope is that PlayPen sessions will run weekly every Friday morning from 930am-12noon, at a cost of £10-12 per parent & child.
To reserve your place please email: leo@winkleystudios.com.

Our host venue St Paul’s Way Community Centre is a 10 min walk from Mile End and Limehouse stations. The Centre houses a fantastic new Ofsted registered crèche that is light and clean, and the playspace is filled with a wide range of toys to encourage play and creativity. Highly experienced childcare professionals from the nearby Matchbox Nursery run the crèche and they are extremely welcoming and friendly. There is a garden area behind too which both the cafe and the creche can access and the centre is also just a 2 min walk from Mile End Park, where they have a brilliant playground and Children’s Centre.

And the on-site Paper&Cup café, a social enterprise created by the Spitalfields Crypt Trust, is a perfect little hideaway serving fine coffee and cakes as well as healthy hot meals. Importantly, Paper&Cup is conducive for work – it’s an inviting and calm space that has tables and sofas, the requisite wifi and even a meeting pod. And if you need to grab some food with your child before or after our co-working session it’s also very child-friendly.

Poplar HARCA (Housing and Regeneration Community Association) run the St Paul’s Way Community Centre and are an organisation committed to making Poplar a better place to live. As well as owning over 9,000 homes in the area, its initiatives empower the local community to take on food growing projects, launch new start up businesses, organise festivals and so much more.

www.winkleystudios.com
www.cooksyard.com
www.poplarharca.co.uk
www.paperandcup.co.uk