This paper investigates the potential of worker co-operatives to help improve working conditions and radically reimagine cultural work. [...] Examining current debates on co-operatives the article explores co-ops as a radical pre-figurative political project, mobilized in a reformist attempt to create a more ethical capitalism or be integrated into neoliberal discourses of entrepreneurship and individual responsibility. It goes on to discuss the potentials and limitations of worker co-ops by looking at precariousness, inequality, and individualization of cultural sector work, arguing that radical co-ops can play an important role within a larger movement that mobilizes collectivity to confront neoliberal individualization and capitalist realism.