Helping the Workshed Inner West build their home

Tucked among the trees in St Lucia, next door to Caring Cuisine and the St Lucia Community Hall, is a cheerful blue-and-yellow building that has been sitting quiet for the past five years.

Not anymore.

The former Girl Guides hall is now home to The Workshed Inner West, a volunteer-led community initiative creating a welcoming and inclusive space for women to learn, make things, connect and belong.

And they’ve been working toward this moment for a while.

Building a community before they had a home

The Workshed Inner West was founded in early 2025 by a group of women who saw a gap in St Lucia and Brisbane’s inner west. They wanted to create a place for women, by women, where practical skills, creativity, wellbeing and community connection could all sit comfortably alongside one another.

There was just one problem: they didn’t have a place.

So they started anyway.

For their first year, The Workshed community met in cafés, libraries and other borrowed spaces while searching for a permanent home. And the idea clearly struck a chord. Their initial expression of interest attracted more than 220 names, and by early 2026 they had 70 members signed up and paying membership fees, all without a facility of their own.

Now, after a lot of persistence, they have the keys to a former Girl Guides site leased from Brisbane City Council.

When River North Treasurer Jane Hawthorne and Board member Rachael Wilcox recently visited The Workshed, Shenny and Tracy gave them a tour of the new home.

They’ve already been busy.

After five years sitting vacant, the building needed some love. Volunteers have been cleaning and sprucing up the site, including clearing years of leaves and brush from the car park. In the process, they discovered several extra metres of parking space they didn’t even know they had.

There is something rather wonderful about a group building a community and quite literally uncovering the space for it as they go.

Much more than a shed

The “shed” is an important part of The Workshed’s vision.

They are establishing a tool library and workshop where women can learn practical skills, build confidence using tools, make and repair things, and learn from one another. One of their first hands-on projects will be particularly appropriate: building the workbenches for the workshop itself.

But The Workshed is about much more than tools.

The building also includes a large space that can host everything from knitting and book clubs to creative workshops, wellbeing activities and community events.

Their vision is to create a place where women can learn practical skills and build confidence while also reducing isolation and strengthening community connection. Their aim is to create a space where women can “create, connect and belong.”

In other words, they’re creating something increasingly precious: a third space.

Not home. Not work. Just a place where you can show up, learn something, make something, meet someone new, have a cuppa, contribute what you know and feel part of something.

Sometimes you just need a kettle

Having a home, of course, brings a whole new list of challenges.

The Workshed now has a building. But filling an empty community space with everything needed to make it functional takes money.

There are chairs and cushions to find. Shelving and furniture. Materials for the workshop. Website and email subscriptions. And, yes, a kettle.

The building’s hot water system needs more than $1,500 worth of repairs. In the meantime, sometimes what a fledgling community organisation really needs is simply a way to make a cup of coffee.

That’s one reason River North’s Action Fund Microgrants are unrestricted. We trust the community organisations we support to know what they need most.

For The Workshed, our latest Action Fund recipient, that $500 will help with the many start-up costs involved in turning an empty building into a functioning community space.

None of those purchases may sound particularly glamorous. But chairs, shelving, subscriptions and kettles are part of the invisible infrastructure that allows community to happen.

More than funding

Our Action Fund is about more than money.

When The Workshed completed River North’s WAVE form, they identified two things that would help them move forward: strong governance foundations and active community participation. As a new community hub, they particularly valued support with governance, policy development and organisational systems.

That gave us a pretty good clue about where we could help beyond the grant itself.

Alongside the funding, The Workshed has received practical support with governance, operations and compliance. River North has also connected them with a pro bono web developer to help strengthen their online presence.

That’s exactly the kind of wraparound support we hope the Action Fund can provide: listen first, understand what an organisation actually needs, and then look at what resources, expertise and connections exist within the wider community to help.

Building what comes next

What struck us most during our visit was the energy behind this very young organisation.

The Workshed is being created by volunteers putting enormous amounts of time, effort and heart into building something they believe their community needs. They aren’t waiting until everything is perfectly organised, beautifully furnished and fully funded.

They’re starting with what they have.

They’ve spent their first year building a community without a building. Now they’re building the infrastructure to give that community a home.

There is something wonderfully fitting about those first workbenches.

Because that’s essentially what The Workshed has been doing from the beginning: building the things they need as they go.

Building practical skills and confidence.

Building connections between women.

Building a place to create, connect and belong.

And now, quite literally, building a space where community can happen.

River North’s Action Fund Microgrant is a small contribution to that work. But sometimes what an emerging community organisation needs most isn’t a large, complicated grant.

It’s someone willing to back them while they get the kettle, the chairs, the systems and the work benches in place.

The Workshed has the keys. Now they’re building what comes next.