Meet Sophie and Louise from The Village

The Village is all about striking a balance between work, life and well-being.

Located in the Auckland suburb of Herne Bay, The Village is a co-working and event space that is striking a balance between work, life and well-being.  This beautiful, design-focused space has a range of areas for members to experience. The home-away-from-home membership model flexes to suit member members' busy lives and fosters a space for learning, collaboration, connection and good vibes.  We chat with Sophie and Louise to find out about the vision behind this unique space.

Located on Jervois Road in a sun-drenched recently renovated villa, The Village feels like a home-away-from-home. Tell us a little more about The Village and it’s offering for members and beyond?

Our membership model is more like a gym membership than an office lease - you can sign up for either the 'Flex 5' plan or the 'Flex 8' plan which allow you to spend the equivalent of 5/8 days per month at the villa. This means you can come for whole days, a bunch of half days, or just pop in to host a meeting or have a shower after the gym as much as you like up to the time allocation your membership provides. We host events under our 'Work' 'Life' and 'Wellbeing' pillars and they are open to everyone (our members just get half price tickets!). We have free yoga for members twice a week, and the space is also available for hire in whole or in part. 

The Village has a real community feel to it, what do you think is key to success in creating a supportive working environment?

We asked people to register their interest in advance of opening, then we met everyone by appointment that applied to be a member so we could introduce ourselves and induct them to the building so they felt at home. We have membership software that profiles each member and we host members lunches on the last Friday of each month to foster connection between our members. We are taking a back seat now and it's great to see The Village form its own dynamic - it was always intended to be community-driven.

We know The Village offers a range of insightful events and speaker series. Are there any coming up you are excited about that we should look out for?

Lockdown 2.0 has put a small spanner in the works in terms of our in-person events, but we have had loads of fun in lockdown hosting live meditations and cooking demos on Instagram Live, and our event 'What's all the fuss with fasting?' with Jason Shon Bennett was really well attended on Zoom. As soon as we're allowed, Miss Polly's Kitchen is teaching a cooking class, and we're really looking forward to a great event called 'The Art of Speaking' with public speaking coach Miriam Chancellor and a live podcast record of The Spinoff's Dietary Requirements. We publish all our event info on our instagram, so keep an eye out!

What is next for The Village? Do you plan to expand? 

We are lucky enough to have reached capacity in our first month of opening. We plan to let the dust settle and see what our members would like from us. In theory, the membership proposition gets better if they can pop in to whichever branch of The Village is closer to them at the time, so we're certainly considering another site across or in the city. 

Interested in working from from this space? Get in touch via their listing below.