Across Scotland, the way we work has changed for good. Many of us now work flexibly, sometimes from home, sometimes from shared spaces – balancing our work around our lives and our communities. But while remote work has opened new possibilities, it has also left many people craving something we all need: connection.

That’s where Connected Hubs Scotland comes in.

We’re building a national network of independent coworking hubs, places that are more than just workspaces. They are community anchors: spaces that help people connect, create, and contribute to the life of their local area.

From Shared Spaces to Shared Purpose

Connected Hubs Scotland began in 2024, when four founding hubs came together with a shared belief that community-rooted workspaces could help build a fairer, more inclusive economy:

• The Melting Pot (Edinburgh) – Scotland’s Centre for Social Innovation, home to changemakers and social entrepreneurs for nearly two decades.
• Impact Hub Inverness – supporting rural innovators and community enterprises across the Highlands and Islands.
• Glasgow Collective – a thriving hub in the East End providing flexible space and opportunity for small businesses, creatives, and community-minded entrepreneurs.
• Dunkeld & Birnam Community Coworking – a community-run hub in a former GP surgery, showing that innovation thrives in every community.

Each of these spaces looks different, but their values are the same: connection, creativity, collaboration, and care. They’ve shown what’s possible when we design places with communities, not for them.

Hubs as Anchors for Inclusive Growth

Hubs like these play a vital role in Scotland’s towns, cities and rural areas. They understand the local economy, the people who live there, and the challenges they face.

They enable entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small businesses to do so much more than rent a desk. They connect people into local supply chains, spark collaboration, and help new ideas take root.

The people who work in these spaces, our hosts, managers, and community connectors are the glue that holds it all together. They know their members by name, build relationships, reduce isolation, and create welcoming, inclusive environments where everyone can thrive.

In many communities, these hubs have become trusted anchor institutions — the kind of places where someone comes for a desk and stays because they’ve found belonging. This makes them powerful vehicles for inclusive entrepreneurship and local economic development. They reduce barriers to participation by providing flexible access to space, community support, and opportunities that would otherwise be out of reach.

Building on this community strength, The Melting Pot works alongside hubs and local partners to nurture the people and ideas that emerge from these spaces. Our Good Ideas programme supports early-stage social innovators to develop and test solutions to the challenges they see in their communities, providing practical tools, mentoring and networks to turn inspiration into impact. Through Enterprise in Place, we take this approach further, working with local hubs to help people explore and grow enterprising ideas that create jobs, services and opportunities rooted in their own place. Together, these programmes demonstrate how locally led innovation can unlock potential, strengthen communities and contribute to a more inclusive economy across Scotland

Through programmes like Enterprise in Place and Good Ideas, we’ve seen how local hubs can engage people who are often overlooked — women returning to work, unpaid carers, older workers, and young people exploring enterprise for the first time. By supporting trusted local facilitators to take on a Community Connector role — people who understand their place, build relationships, and act as a bridge between the hub and the wider community — we’re helping individuals to gain confidence, develop new skills, and access networks in a space they already know and trust.

It’s this human connection, the relationships built every day inside these spaces that creates lasting impact.

A Connected Network for a Thriving Scotland

Connected Hubs Scotland now brings together over 25 hubs; each deeply rooted in its community and connected to the other hubs in the network across Scotland through a shared purpose. Together, they form a national infrastructure that supports local prosperity and wellbeing, the building blocks of Scotland’s Community Wealth Building agenda.

By keeping resources, opportunities, and ownership within communities, these hubs help local economies grow from the ground up. They make it possible for people to work, learn and create close to home reducing the need to leave rural or island areas to find opportunity.

We’re inspired by what’s already been achieved in Ireland. Since its launch in 2021, the Connected Hubs Ireland network has grown to over 350 hubs, creating access to more than 5,300 desk spaces and contributing an estimated €1 billion annually to the Irish economy. That investment has transformed access to workspace for rural and remote workers, revitalising towns and supporting balanced regional growth.

Scotland has the same opportunity: to create a connected ecosystem of people and places that helps everyone, everywhere, to thrive.

You’re Connected – Strengthening Scotland’s Hub Network

To help make this vision a reality, we’ve launched You’re Connected; a membership designed to help people become part of Scotland’s growing coworking movement. It offers access to inspiring hubs across the Connected Hubs Scotland network, connecting members to unique communities both in person and online.

Members gain entry to a nationwide network of workspaces, peer-learning events, and a community of people committed to making positive change — all rooted in local places but united by a shared purpose to build a thriving, inclusive Scotland.

You’re Connected members might be remote workers looking to grow their networks, professionals travelling across Scotland who want to drop into the best independent hubs along the way, or changemakers passionate about the role coworking plays in local economic development and social regeneration.

It’s a simple idea with powerful intent, to connect people and places, strengthening the coworking communities that help Scotland’s ideas, enterprises and communities to thrive.

A Future Rooted in People and Place

Work is such a big part of our lives, but where and how we work is changing. As we adapt, we have a chance to build something better: workplaces that are local, inclusive, sustainable, and full of human connection.

Connected Hubs Scotland is showing what’s possible when we design work around people and place not the other way around.

By investing in these hubs, and the people who make them thrive, we can build a Scotland where everyone has access to spaces that nurture wellbeing, connection and opportunity.

A Scotland where every community, from Shetland to the Borders, has a place to connect, collaborate and create; where inclusive enterprise flourishes, local wealth is retained, and the power of community shapes a more vibrant, equitable future for us all.

Read the Report