Are We All Ready To Get Offline Again?

In the 21st century, there’s no shortage of ways to stay connected, if anything, there’s too many! Group chats, DMs, Slack, dating apps, voice notes, FaceTime, even the comments section under someone’s Instagram post. And yet, somewhere between the endless notifications and having 14 different conversations going at once, Sydney has found itself short on places to actually be around people. Not a nightclub or a crowded room where you’re surrounded by people but don’t have a reason to talk, but somewhere that’s actually designed to spark conversation and connection.

That’s the thinking behind Coping Studio; a new Surry Hills space from Alice Griffin and Jannah Anderson. The irony? The pair have spent much of their careers doing more or less the opposite: building communities online. The physical space for Coping Studio was initially conceived as somewhere to record and grow the Coping Podcast, but once the it existed, they began thinking of how to open it up to the people listening on the other side of the microphone. Much like the rest of us, they began craving something you just can’t replicate through a screen… real-life interactions with real people.

Alice was previously editor-in-chief of Junkee Media and editor of MTV.com.au, while Jannah’s career has moved through coworking spaces, public art, creative programming, seasonal events and festivals. Between them, they’ve spent years watching people find each other online, but now, they want to see what happens when those conversations have somewhere physical to land.

“I’ve always known there was an appetite for people wanting to take those online conversations IRL and share their passions with other people who get it,” Alice tells Sitchu.

For Jannah, the idea was even more personal. Having not grown up in Sydney, she knows how difficult it can be to find places where you don’t feel like you’re supposed to arrive with an already established friendship group in tow.

“So many of us are craving connection but simply haven’t had access to a space that’s intentionally built for practising it,” she says.

Practising is the key word, because Coping Studio isn’t trying to be another venue built around icebreakers and forced introductions. It’s more about giving people something to do and letting everything else happen on its own.

The New Way to Make Friends

Making friends as an adult is a weird one. When you’re a kid, you’re kind of thrown into rooms full of people your own age and told to figure it out. At school, university or your first job, there’s always some reason to talk to the person next to you. Then suddenly you’re an adult, everyone’s busy and you’re left wondering where exactly you’re supposed to meet new people. It’s a struggle.

For Coping, the answer is less about trying to make friends and more about creating the conditions for friendship to happen naturally.

“Friendship is what happens when people are given a shared anchor,” Jannah says. At the studio, that might mean listening to a live recording of the Coping Podcast, reading silently alongside strangers, writing together or making something with your hands.

“When people are oriented around a shared activity or experience, connection becomes less of an effort or something we’re trying to perform or even force, and more of an inevitable by-product.”

It’s a philosophy reflected in the room itself. Jannah describes the studio as an “elevated version of your living room”, designed to feel cosy, warm and unintimidating. The best part is that the team has noticed the same faces appearing across different events and even in the studio’s comment sections. That repetition, she says, is what begins to turn an interaction into an actual friendship.

And perhaps that’s the appeal. You don’t have to walk into a room thinking you’re going to make a new best friend. You just show up, have something to do and see who you end up talking to.

Come and Do Something Different

Rather than filling the calendar with the usual workshops and networking events, Alice and Jannah have sought out Sydney creatives and communities that are already doing interesting things and given them a physical home.

There’s a monthly sapphic fan club, silent reading sessions, poetry and writing nights, book clubs and collaborations with communities including Glitter Gel Pen Book Club, Used To Muse and Writer’s Pond. The studio has an artist-in-residence program, with a different female-identifying artist featured each month. The intention is for the room itself to keep changing, so that every visit feels different.

Jannah calls these programming highlights “coping mechanisms”; a phrase that neatly captures what they’re trying to create.

“The Coping brand is built around the present-tense verb,” she says, describing coping as an ongoing, lifelong project rather than something we eventually master.

“You don’t need to be a poet, a published writer, an analytical reader, a confident speaker, or a journalling icon to get something meaningful out of a session,” Jannah says.

Maybe you leave with a sentence you wrote or overhear a conversation that sticks with you. Or, maybe you have a new idea to think about on the bus ride home.

And if you just leave thinking, ‘I could come back’, that’s enough.

Making Room for Something Real

“It’s truly wild what you can do with four walls,” Jannah says, describing bricks and mortar as an “engine for creativity and expression” when a space is treated with intention.

It’s maybe the simplest argument for getting out from behind a screen. A physical space gives you the chance to sit beside a stranger, return the following week and slowly turn a familiar face into a familiar person. A conversation that starts at a workshop can continue outside it, and a passing interaction can become an actual friendship.

And, the founders are proof of their own theory. Jannah says some of the rituals that have emerged around Coping have slipped into her own life, including a community choir she joined with new friends she met at the studio. Her week now has Hot Chocolate Mondays, weekend walks, mornings with her dog Mango and wine-bar conversations with Alice about the existential questions that started the whole thing.

Maybe that’s the real thing we’re craving. Not another activity to add to an already overloaded calendar, but rituals that make our lives feel a little more connected.

In a city that can feel expensive, sprawling and surprisingly difficult to break into, Coping Studio is betting that sometimes the answer isn’t another app, group chat or carefully planned night out. Sometimes it’s just a room, a shared activity and the person sitting next to you.

Discover Coping Studio’s upcoming experiences here.

107/59 Marlborough St, Surry Hills NSW 2010