This document proposes the concept of "SKILLxShops" as an alternative way to help unemployed people find work. SKILLxShops would be shared workspaces where people with similar skills and interests could collaborate, demonstrate their abilities to potential employers, and create new types of jobs and businesses together. Empty shops in city centers could be used as SKILLxShops, bringing business creation back into core urban areas. The concept is intended to empower people by valuing their existing skills rather than trying to fit them into predefined jobs.

1. SKILLxShop
Concept
The established way of employing the unemployed is through Job Centres.
These places try to fit people to listed jobs. For people with little experience or specific
knowledge, the process is dispiriting since it tries to rework the human to meet the task.
Perhaps, it would be better to reverse the situation.
Instead of offices that demand people come in and negotiate down their skills and interests
to meet specific jobs and roles, maybe we can create places where people with shared
knowledge and skills can meet up to show their capabilities and to work with others to
make new types of jobs and businesses.
What
There are a couple of simple ways in which these places could be described:
• General business - a mixture of people with skills drawn from across the management,
technical, artistic, manufacturing, etc. world who can make new connections with others
and build virtual businesses to try and create new jobs for themselves and others. For
many individuals, finding people with skills they do not themselves possess is tricky,
particularly when un(der)employed. A shared space like this could create an artisan
business environment, open to the creation of new partnerships and ways of working.
• Themed business - being with people with the same experience and skills can be an
empowering experience for some people. The semi-competitive environment allows
them to see more in themselves and more in what they can do. A themed space
(marketing, graphics, making, web) could allow people to show existing businesses what
they can do and make it easier for individuals or ad hoc groups to talk and bid for
contracts.
Where
Unused shops in city centre or outskirts could be used.
This is a return to the old artisan concept of mixing places to shop with those to make and
work. It is coupling a reinvigoration of the shopping areas with a re-building of local
businesses and the people who make them live and grow.
Bringing graphic design, web design, marketing, making and so on back to the high street
is a way of reversing the Corbuisian flow of business to special areas (business parks,
science parks, etc.) and back into the core areas of the city.

2. How
The concept could be tried out in one empty shop in the city centre.
We need:-
Shop
Rebranding of front with banner/graphics
Office furniture
Wifi/Internet
Some soft furniture
Volunteers to enable attendees to find their feet and find out how to make new businesses
together. A strong support mechanism is needed to pump prime this kind of new way of
involving the unemployed in establishing their skills, talking to others about ways of
working mutually and bringing in businesses to talk and trade with the people.
The system can have a self-supporting side through skill swapping and barter to enable
low-cost start ups drawing from a range of skills amongst the attendees.
A social networking side can expand the reach of the physical site to a greater range of
people both to invite them in and to share the work.
TEDxBrum
TEDxBrum speakers and their ideas sparked this concept.
They include:
Andy Weatherley
Birmingham was a city where business and passion could work together to deliver wealth
and moral achievements for all.
Rob Bloxham
It's better to put an idea out there than sit on it and let it achieve nothing.
Sarah Mount
Technology is something that we can all take control of. We can make and build virtual and
physical objects together in new ways.
Ben Dyson & Eleanor Watson
Like technology, wealth and money creation is something that we can all take control of
and make work in a way that is novel.
Eleanor Hoad
People may goggle at non-standard ways of using the streets of Birmingham and fear
change but they can realise the benefit and share the success.

3. Tonya Bolton
Accepting and being bold and truthful about how we came to where we are can be the
basis of finding our new selves and new lives.
Leon Burke
This concept may get people playing with Macs and Photoshop out of his favourite coffee
shops.
Getting going
This is just an idea that came out of my experience of listening to a range of people at
TEDxBrum.
I'm open to it being a really bad idea (and I can identify some holes) but it'd be nice to talk
about different ways of doing things that might fix a range of social problems through using
local places and local knowledge to empower people and support their skills rather than
endlessly berate them for having the 'wrong' experience or knowledge.
I can be contacted on Twitter @acuity_design
Alastair Somerville
+44 (0)7808 480749