Cultures of Cooperation: Insights from a Study of Co-ops in the Creative Industries
For Seattle-based Story 2 Designs, a people-of-colour-led digital co-op, working co-operatively means making a workplace where "there are no bosses," says worker-owner Jordan Green. By a "culture of no bosses," Green explains, "we're really saying we respect your autonomy as a human being, and we see you as a human first." Green describes the co-op as an experiment in "how to act as leaders that are on an equal footing with each other." Story 2 Designs, a five-member worker co-op, is one of several co-ops profiled in Sharing Like We Mean It: Working Co-operatively in the Cultural and Tech Sectors, a hybrid research report and co-op primer that we recently produced with a team of collaborators.
The cultural sector is notorious for the prevalence of precarious and individualised labour. The Covid-19 crisis has intensified pressures on cultural workers, especially after years of public underfunding. While our research was conducted prior to the coronavirus pandemic in late 2019, our findings confirm that the urge to escape dominant working realities and to build alternatives is a key reason for people to begin to work co-operatively. And during moments of crisis, when the limits of dominant structures lie harshly exposed, the need for alternatives emerges with renewed urgency.
For our research, we designed an online survey that was completed by 106 co-operatives in the cultural, media, and tech sectors based in Canada, the UK, and the US. Our research explores a small yet vibrant subset of co-ops that are active in the cultural and tech fields, from co-operatively run art galleries to co-op advertising agencies, web development companies, architecture firms, coworking spaces, and ceramic studios. We carried out this research to gain a picture of co-operatives' presence in creative industries, the work realities of creative co-ops, and the benefits and challenges of co-operation. Here we'll highlight a handful of insights from our research.
We asked our survey participants to rank the most important reasons for their co-op's existence. The five most frequently selected reasons were to: support the well-being of members; generate economic value for members; make a positive impact on the world; promote an economic alternative; and create meaningful work. This shows that people don't get involved in co-ops just to improve their individual working conditions. Co-operators want to be a part of—or help to create—a different kind of organization, one whose top priority is not "growth for its own sake," as one surveyed co-op put it. Or, in the words of another participating co-op, Blake House Co-operative, the co-op model "allowed us to create a workplace that is an alternative to the extractive, undemocratic capitalist enterprise. And whilst functioning within capitalism, we, as the co-operative movement, build an antidote to it every day."
Creating secure, caring, and democratic workplaces from within a competitive economy that privileges profit over people is not easy. Among the challenges reported by the co-ops in our survey are cash flow, affordable office space, and a rapidly changing sector. Beyond the challenges of sustaining a co-op, however, are the challenges of starting up an alternative business, which requires time and money—resources that are not evenly distributed in our society. In order to maintain autonomy and independence, or perhaps due to a lack of understanding of co-ops on the part of lenders, bank loans and venture capital tend to not be important funding sources for co-operatives in our study. According to our survey, co-ops rather resort to retained earnings, online fundraising, and loans from members or member shares. Nearly three-quarters of the co-ops report relying significantly on the support of member labour during the start-up phase. Given the difficult financial position co-ops often find themselves in during the early stages, this member labour, it is reasonable to assume, is often unpaid or underpaid.
Overall, our findings suggest that the struggles co-ops face are often worth it. As one co-op highlights: "Working in a workers' co-op can be challenging and exhausting due to taking responsibility for the business and other stresses. But that shared responsibility, the autonomy of work, and the sense of directly contributing to the success and sustainability of the organization are also incredibly rewarding." Our survey reveals high work satisfaction among co-operators: more than 90% of the co-ops surveyed report being satisfied with their general working conditions. Over 55% of the co-ops report that their pay meets or exceeds the average for their industry. More than 80% feel satisfied with the level of support they receive at work. Co-ops also succeed in confronting the lack of democracy in traditional workplaces, with over 90% agreeing that democratic decision-making is a priority in their co-op and 86% agreeing that they aim for consensus when making decisions.
Interestingly, when asked about the main benefits of working in a co-op, a stable income was not among the most frequently selected important factors. The five most-selected benefits of working at a co-op were: supportive work relationships; a friendly work environment; opportunities for creative self-expression; a work culture that encourages teamwork and co-operation; and low hierarchy at work. The real difference co-ops are making to the lives of co-operators seems to stem from a co-operative work culture and the quality of relationships. Our survey respondents emphasize that there is strength to be found in co-operation. One co-op, for example, explains how their founders were drawn to "the idea of community, co-operation, [and] responsibility, how we are stronger together and can accomplish more that way than apart."
Building a strong co-operative work culture requires time and space to discuss, engage with one another, and build meaningful relationships. Meetings have a bad reputation as being tedious and time-consuming, taking away precious time for more focused, productive work. In a corporate setting, meetings are often used to transmit information from the top to the bottom. Within co-ops, meetings can, however, be an opportunity for keeping the co-operative spirit alive, for discussing the things that matter to worker-owners—anything from pay to working hours, business strategy, and social impact is potentially up for debate. According to our survey, meetings have a clear positive impact on co-ops and their members. They create space for deliberation and debate, which are an essential element of co-operative practice.
Our research shows that the co-operative principles are central to the workaday operation of co-ops. Over 47% of co-ops in our survey report that they discuss the co-op principles "frequently" or "always," and a further 44% discuss them "sometimes." Our survey suggests that continuous reflection about what it means to operate as a co-op yields many benefits: co-ops that discuss co-op principles more frequently tend to report being more active in the co-op movement and report stronger member engagement.
Diversity remains a challenge for co-operatives. The co-ops surveyed describe themselves as most diverse with respect to gender and age, and least diverse with respect to race. Nearly 18% of co-ops describe themselves as "not at all" racially diverse and 52.6% describe themselves as only "slightly" racially diverse. Clearly, co-ops in the creative industries must do more to be accessible to, and retain, racialized members. But our findings also reveal an important practical insight: member diversity is positively correlated with discussion of the co-op principles. One interpretation is that the more a co-op engages the co-op principles, the more likely it is that the co-op will be representative and inclusive.
Co-operative working can be as empowering as it can be challenging—as one co-op put it, "It's hard work but the right work for creating the future we want." Our research findings reaffirm the possibility of resisting and building alternatives to undemocratic, individualised, and uncaring work cultures in creative industries. Furthering co-op formation, our research suggests, requires both raising public awareness of the co-op model's practicalities and benefits and strengthening co-operative development support. One area where co-ops in our study show promise, however, is in their engagement with the larger co-operative movement through practices of inter-co-operation: the majority of the co-ops report that they co-operate with other co-ops, from banking with credit unions to sharing resources and procuring services from each other.
While co-ops are not a magic solution to systemic work problems, our research is suggestive of co-ops' potential to remake work in ways that have yet to be fully realized, or widely tested, in the cultural and tech sectors. As Story 2 Design's Green puts it, "if we want to change the way that we relate to each other, we should change the way in which we relate to our work."
Image credit: Tara Campbell
