Cooperativism in Cultural and Tech Sectors: Promises and Challenges
This paper reports on a survey of co-operatives in the cultural and technology sectors in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Creative industries are a growth area for new cooperativism, with more than a quarter of surveyed co-operatives in operation for less than five years. While the findings show that co-operation is a promising strategy for countering individualized experiences of work, for democratizing workplaces, and for facilitating satisfying work in creative industries, they also reveal significant challenges which individual co-operatives and the wider co-operative movement must confront for cooperativism to have a sustainable and inclusive future in the cultural and technology sectors.
Image credit: Isobel Woodiwiss
