How to Build a Coworking Space Around a City’s Personality, with Gerry Villiers
Inside a community-led approach to coworking and local culture.
The best coworking spaces reflect the personality of the city around them. That philosophy has shaped how Gerry Villiers runs BLOCK in Bristol – a premium flexible workspace where coworking extends into local partnerships, charity initiatives, wellness events, and community-led experiences.
As marketing manager and general manager, Gerry helps shape one of the company’s largest locations, while maintaining a distinctly local identity. BLOCK first established itself in towns across England’s South West, but Bristol presented a completely different challenge, being a larger city with a different pace and a new kind of coworking community.
Before joining BLOCK, Gerry worked in teaching and events management, roles rooted in bringing people together. That people-first mindset now influences everything from BLOCK’s playful, personality-driven marketing to the way the team supports members professionally and personally.
As BLOCK expands into new cities, including Birmingham and Manchester, Gerry reflects on adapting coworking spaces to local cultures and why storytelling and community care matter more than selling desks.
1. What’s your experience in the coworking industry been like, and what drew you in?
Gerry: I’m completely new to the coworking industry and was drawn in by the job that BLOCK created. What’s great about BLOCK is that they hire people who bring value into the building itself. The job gets created around that person, rather than the other way around.
I’ve always been a people person. I used to be a teacher and worked as an awards manager, which are very people-focused roles. When I moved into events in the coworking industry, I went from looking after children to looking after adults. I was attracted to events and the community side of coworking because I love talking to people and chatting about work.
My role is very much about looking after people. From the job description and the BLOCK values, the role sounded like something I could lean into, shape, and bring alive. In a lot of companies, management teams can be in control of a lot of things, whereas at BLOCK, management lets you run with it, and you bring the ideas.
BLOCK had predominantly been in South West towns like Plymouth and Taunton, which are very different from Bristol (where I’m based). It’s a big city, a big building, and a completely different challenge.
Our Bristol team brings a completely new approach to coworking at BLOCK, because we’re a city mentality. That’s where you have to shape the team around the location, rather than the other way around. We all work and live here, and have been here for a long time. We love the city, so we bring the location background to BLOCK.
I love this balance, being general manager for the coworking community and office spaces, drawing on my event experience, and learning about the coworking industry. There’s still much more to learn.
2. BLOCK is expanding into larger regional cities. How much of its identity is shaped by being rooted in the South West?
Gerry: The expansion is really exciting. BLOCK has become very established in the South West; our founder, Ben, has always had the idea of moving forward and growing.
The Exeter site came first, as a test to see how BLOCK would work and establish itself. Then the second building at Royal William Yard in Plymouth just struck a chord with Ben. Next came Taunton. He intended to build the next premium office space brand in the South West, and he’s done it.
When I first started, we literally had one tenant on one of our floors. And then within that year, we were 100% full. We’ve since taken on another floor shaped around larger companies, with epic views of the city.
They’re all such different locations. Bristol is a big impact city, and the move here came with a whole range of different questions and challenges, but the team is amazing. Even though we’ve planted roots in the South West, BLOCK is ready to explode into other regions.
There’s such a nice synergy between our members helping us and us helping them. That’s what I love about this industry: it’s two-way, where members have a coworking membership or office space, but we’re growing with them, and they’re growing with us.
They might start with coworking before going into an office, and taking half a floor. It’s nice to get to know our members, see them grow, and they see us grow – we all support each other. I feel proud when somebody comes to me saying they’d like to expand. It’s great if we can cater to them.
This year, we received an exciting investment that will bring BLOCK to other regions, including opening new sites in Birmingham and Manchester. We’re very much a South West company, but our values don’t change, and we carry them to new sites. Ben is particularly good at helping everyone understand exactly what BLOCK is and what we represent. That isn’t going to change, even though we’re expanding into different regions. Our core values stay the same.
Our members use all of our buildings. If they’re based in Bristol, they can also enjoy all of the other buildings, even in Birmingham and Manchester. This works for our Bristol members because a few of them have clients in those cities, and it helps them when they’re booking a meeting room, for instance.
3. How do you balance maintaining brand identity with adapting to new city cultures?
Gerry: We hire people who already live in that city. That was really important when BLOCK came to Bristol, because the team and I knew all the restaurants where we could get our community discounts, the people we wanted to reach out to organise pop-up events or support the local community, and the charities to engage with.
We’ve had a few members who moved here weeks before coming to BLOCK, so we’ve not only helped them in a work sense, but also personally. So, if they’ve got family, they want to know where the best child-friendly restaurants are, or they’re looking for some sport to go to watch. It’s not always about work.
Our BLOCK buildings accommodate work-life balance. For example, we’ve got a beautiful yoga studio and gym in Bristol that our members can enjoy for free. We’re tapping into leisure, fitness, and wellbeing, as well as having a desk and community for people to engage with.
We’re also introducing them to people in the coworking space. BLOCK supports individuals who are new to Bristol, and companies from Europe and further afield.
Even though I’m a general manager in Bristol, I still talk to the general managers in Taunton, Plymouth, and Exeter. We’re so close as a team. I really noticed that when I first started. Ruby (who runs the building in Plymouth) gave our team a greater understanding of our roles.
With our expansion to Birmingham, it’s really nice to pass the baton on to their team. I’ve met the new general manager in Birmingham, and she’s going to be fantastic.
4. BLOCK puts out a lot of fun, personality-driven content. How intentional is that as part of your brand strategy?
Gerry: It’d be pretty boring if everybody had the same marketing strategy, so we like our marketing to be a bit more playful, a bit more out there.
Our creative director is amazing; he captures our spaces beautifully and brings a certain edge to them. Our videos are particularly strong and playful, but they’re powerful as well. It’s a team effort.
Our marketing team has grown massively. A marketing contact of mine advised me to tell the BLOCK story about what we represent as a brand. You can talk about selling offices and coworking, but it’s all the other bits that make it special and stand out.
That really resonated with me. The team and I focused on creating a series of posts that reflected the best bits about BLOCK — everything that makes you want to base yourself at one of our sites. It’s about the natural light coming through, or the yoga, gym, or community events. It’s about the charities that we’re supporting, or why we love the city.
I really wanted to focus on when you step into the building: how does it make you feel? It’s quite hard to create that through content, but people seem to enjoy it.
I had to go to jail for one of our recent campaigns. I was approached by Children’s Hospice South West (our charity of the year since September), and Amanda, who runs it, asked me if I’d like to go to prison for charity. So I told my team, and they agreed to bail me out.
I actually got physically arrested by the police in the cafe, which was quite an experience. People thought I really was getting arrested, which was quite funny!
It’s fun to be involved in things like that. Recently, we ran another event with the Children’s Hospice South West around wellbeing and fitness. All our members were running and cycling around the city for charity, and we had a breakfast.
Bristol is phenomenal because all of the events that I’ve been to have really supported us. Even our competitors are just lovely; we’ve been to a few of their spaces, and they’ve been here, and our spaces look incredibly different, but we all have similar approaches to how we want to support Bristol.
The local community are almost as important as our coworking community. People have taken over our spaces for various fundraising events, raffles, or just bringing people together. For instance, we work with Wild Coworking – a coworking community that brings women together in spaces across Bristol.
Everybody that I’ve met in this industry has been so nice, welcoming, and friendly. After going to events, like GCUC UK last year, I came away thinking this is definitely an industry I want to dive into more.
When I’m pulling my stats for a marketing report, I find it fascinating to see a shift in who’s visiting us from different regions across the UK. We had a few people visit us from Northern Ireland the other day.
Everybody wants to keep moving – our tagline is: Rework your work. What Ben has created is really a case of reworking your work. The way the team approaches work-life balance and how everybody is so passionate about BLOCK and the industry helps when you’re trying to make every building a success. Even though I work in Bristol, I want Taunton and Plymouth to be successful.
It’s a very inspiring environment to work in, and we’re all such a mixture. We all get on so well, but we bring completely different experiences, backgrounds, industries, ages, and locations to our roles. There are always exciting things to talk about, and we might go in one direction, and then we’ll suddenly change gear and go in a completely different direction.
I feel honoured to work for BLOCK. The company really values us as individuals. That shows, and it has a domino effect on our members. We care about everybody here, and we want everyone to be happy.
5. Where do you think coworking is heading over the next 3–5 years, and how is BLOCK preparing for these shifts?
Gerry: I’m in two minds about this. In terms of coworking specifically, and with everything that’s going on in the world, there are challenges with taking on new office space due to budget shifts.
In Bristol specifically, we’ve seen an increase in coworking numbers, because it’s a city with lots of people, and more people want to expand rather than shrink. What’s great about BLOCK is that we’re flexible. Whatever happens in the industry in the next three to five years, we support it.
So, if people are struggling, we come up with a plan that works for them. If they want to expand, we can hopefully expand into the buildings and help them take on more space. If they want to do month-to-month, we offer that too.
But it differs in every location. People have different needs in Plymouth and Taunton, and these towns have smaller communities with values that differ from those in Bristol.
In Taunton, the community want to chat to each other more, and support local companies over big corporates. We need to bring more workshops and creativity to the space. Each General Manager recognises what their members like and organises amazing events based on their community, testing new themes each month and sharing things that work.
We’ve got two terraces at our Bristol space, and I had an idea to make them into community gardens and put more plants out there. I spoke to one of our green-fingered members, and she was interested in getting involved, and encouraged me to ask the companies in the building to have a stand and a bed each that could be their garden to do what they want with it.
This building feels like my second home. I want to make it nice for people, and for them to work here and be proud of their space. We encourage opportunities for members to use our in-house gym and yoga studio. Recently, we had a local supplier run a complimentary cocktail pop-up, and people enjoyed a cocktail out on the terrace in the sunshine.
Lots of people have reached out to our Business Development Manager and used Cariad’s huge network of contacts to offer member discounts across the city, in restaurants and hotels, padel and cricket. They love it.
Being marketing and general manager is such a nice mix. It can be intense to have both of those roles running alongside each other. But I’d never give one of them up for the other because I’m such a people person.
I want to be able to chat with people in the morning, have a laugh with them, and celebrate them. I absolutely love our community and that everybody wants to talk to each other. It’s very Bristol.
About People Make Coworking
Celebrating the people who make up the fabric of the global coworking movement, People Make Coworking interviews coworking space founders and community builders who share their journeys of bringing people together.
Edition #29 of People Make Coworking interviews Gerry Villiers, marketing manager and general manager at BLOCK in Bristol – a premium flexible workspace originating in the South West.