Guest Blog by Nati Linares and Caroline Woolard
[USDAC Introduction: Last year, we launched A People’s WPA, a bold reimagining of labor. New Economy Coalition has been at the forefront of reimagining economic systems for artists. This is an excerpt from a piece written by art.coop’s Nati Linares and Caroline Woolard in 2021 for Nonprofit Quarterly. Read the entire piece. Through our blog, we are excited to continue to bring you reflections and provocations from our partners in the field.]
We are two mothers, listening, learning, in a pandemic, writing to you from the United States, on unceded Nipmuc, Podunk, Tunxis, Wangunk, and Sicoag land on the East Coast. Here—and likely where you are—artists and culture bearers are innovating models for liberation. We tuck in our babies, hold their small hands through the virus and tear gas, and continue the intergenerational work. We are Nati Linares and Caroline Woolard—a cultural organizer and an artist—and we believe that every cultural worker should be able to feed their children and pay their rent. We believe that culture is the key to reimagining the collective vision of what’s possible. As you read this, we invite you to sense the heartbeats that flow through it. This is one effort among many. This is an invitation to join a long process of transformation—together.
Recently, in an Anticapitalism for Artists workshop,1 musician Clara Takarabe said: “I have asked, as you have probably asked: Is there a place in this world for me? Today, I would reframe that question as: Is this the world we deserve?”2 Takarabe reminds us that together we can join and organize the worlds we deserve—in the arts and beyond. In fact, the people who have been most harmed by our current system of neoliberal and racial capitalism are creating community-controlled, hyperlocal economies that move us beyond capitalism. The systems that artists want are not only possible, they already exist—and they can be strengthened and cultivated with intention.
There are many examples. A leading Native artisan co-op in the country, Qualla Arts and Crafts, has been led by culture bearers since 1946.3 In Boston, a democratically managed investment fund, Boston Ujima Project, places Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) arts and cultural organizing at the heart of its work.4 A leading national community loan fund that invests in U.S. worker co-ops, The Working World, was started by artists.5 Artists in Belgium founded Smart, the co-op that gives 35,000 freelancers the benefits of full-time employees (including unemployment insurance).6 Smart’s model is now being piloted in the United States by the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives’ Guilded.7
Why should culture and economic innovation go together? Because, right now, we have a superstar system in which the winners take all and the rest are left with crumbs. Because, just like art, housing and dignified work are human rights. Because artists are the original gig workers. Because culture making and political organizing go hand in hand. Because we want a world in which everyone’s needs are met, so that everyone can participate in the remaking of culture and society. Because an artist living in a community land trust in New York City will have twenty-seven hours a week to make art, compared to an artist in market-priced housing who will have four hours a week for artmaking.8 Because we must repair centuries of injustice.
While practices of equitable and sustainable self-determination and community control are rooted in a myriad of ancestral and community norms, the term solidarity economy is relatively recent. The term emerged in Chile and France in the 1980s,9 gained popularity in Latin America in the 1990s as economía solidaria, and then spread globally as an interdependent movement after the first annual World Social Forum in Brazil, in 2001, which popularized the slogan “another world is possible.”10
The solidarity economy is now recognized internationally as a path to valuing people and the planet over profits and to uniting grassroots practices like lending circles, credit unions, worker cooperatives, and community land trusts to form a base of political power and transform our economy and world. Most people are aware of the discrete practices and models that comprise the solidarity economy, but do not know that there is a framework that holds these concepts together, or that these practices are supported holistically in other countries around the world.
The following are some examples of arts and culture groups and initiatives that are part of the solidarity economy in the United States. It is important to note that all networks and infrastructure in the solidarity economy—regardless of emphasis or not on arts and culture—aim to support artists and culture bearers.11
Read the entire piece for examples.
To support the solidarity economy with integrity in the United States and beyond, a slow process of relationship building between culture bearers, solidarity economy organizers, public sector workers, and arts and culture grantmakers must begin. Lasting impact will not be made if (1) solidarity economy becomes a buzzword, popular only for a short time, or (2) if newcomers with visibility are supported instead of community-based groups who have been doing this work for decades.
It’s clear that artists need a solidarity economy if we are to overcome our status as exploited workers. Likewise, the solidarity economy movement needs artists if it is to prevail. We believe that culture—visual arts, music, culinary arts, sports, video games, literature, theater, television, Web content, TikToks, and more—is the key to sparking the collective imagination of what’s actually possible when there is community control of our economies and resources. There have never been radical movements without radical artists and creators at the helm—so let’s get busy resisting, building, and creating.
