Workplace tours and the cultural production of flexibility

Tours of offices in English cities for those who are not working in them have risen in popularity since the growth of co-working spaces in the 2010s. In contrast to workplace tours of industrial sites, in these contemporary office tours the tourist is neither clearly distinct from the worker, nor are they necessarily undertaking the tour to see work taking place. The contemporary office tour therefore enacts a process of “de-differentiation” between work and leisure spaces. Yet simultaneously though and somewhat countering this thesis of de-differentiation, it is flexibility that is the attraction displayed in these office tours, understood as the capacities to make micro-distinctions in activity in a given space. Contemporary office tours frequently stage a proximity and even interchangeability between work and leisure, one that highlights abilities to both make and dissolve the boundaries between the two, creating a flexible workplace structure that has been typically associated with urban cultural economies that foreground entrepreneurialism and passion for work. The article argues though that office flexibility is itself part of processes of urban cultural production that are intended to create value both within and beyond the work in the office itself. The production of flexibility in the office tour is an indicator of contemporary urban cultural economies in which value is produced in the present through the promise of future adaptable usage of space. • Tours of offices in London have risen in popularity since the growth of co-working spaces in the 2010s. • The tourist is neither distinct from the worker, nor are they necessarily undertaking the tour to see work taking place. • Office tours are cultural productions of flexibility that stage an interchangeability between work and leisure. • The value of spatial flexibility lies in a proliferation of micro-level boundary-making practices around work. • The production of flexibility in the office tour is an indicator of how value is produced in contemporary urban cultural economies.