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The materials in Toolkit for Cooperative, Collective, & Collaborative Cultural Work trace a process we have been working through for over a year with over 25 collaborators, mentors, and friends whom we admire. As we reached the final stages of compiling this project to share and distribute publicly, we suddenly found ourselves within the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented global health crisis that has shaken our community, our process, and every aspect of our lives. In the wake of the pandemic, we are reminded that at the heart of our work lies the understanding that wellbeing, integrity, equity, and care is our collective responsibility. We are reminded of the teachings of our mentors and the ways that radical organizing and effective social change movements have been organized in solidarity with dispersed communities across the globe, and more recently through digital and internet-based platforms. We are reminded that communities have survived and thrived through independent networks of cooperation and barter-based economies and that we cannot and should not see our physical isolation as the limiting of our power to organize. We are reminded that in solidarity and in collaboration with others we can organize to build incredible cultural institutions, businesses, communities, and livelihoods that are essential to society.

We offer this toolkit with the hope that it may remind us of the strength we have together, within our communities and as a collective; that it may contribute to our practices of being together even when we are dispersed; and that it may affirm, if it wasn’t already deeply evident, just how fundamental our bonds with one another are for our survival and our flourishing.

In an effort to ground us in this moment, we invited our collaborators and members of our community to share reflections on their current experiences:

“After living in collective + co-operative housing for many years, this pandemic hits while I live in a small house with just one other person and I am caught between thankfulness for the control and comfort I have to isolate in and a deep frustration and longing for The Thing. The Project - the big collective space where my beloveds are all here next to me, and safe, and our pooled resources are the perfect set-up to weather this crisis, and our expenses are low enough that surviving without paid work is more like a freedom than a burden. In collective dreaming, we are always balancing the here and now with the there and then (after Munoz) - it becomes clear that when business as usual is halted, the normal barriers to scale become filmy and transparent. With all this time, why can’t I farm my own yard? With all this need, why aren’t I delivering rescued groceries to my neighbors weekly? I think we culturally learn from (dis)rupture that together we can think bigger and wider, and that we must do so presently. I hope those re-negotiations stay with us when the empire attempts to resume its deplorable routine.”

     - Georgia McCandlish


“Structure has been stripped away, there are no guidelines, no examples to reference. We are in newfound territory, and many of us are not used to sedentary lifestyles. One thing I'm certain of, regardless of what I get done during this time or how I spend my days, is the intentions I wake up with each morning. I know that this is a time of forming habits, conscious or not. So I want to be intentional and build some consistency for myself.”

    - Jacob Marley


“At a time when the capitalists and those who find joy in causing havoc in our lives, we have the audacity to come together and work cooperatively and struggle to understand and build. We have the audacity to resist individualism. We have the audacity to connect and listen to each other in order to create something greater than us. We have the audacity to heal within our connection while offering to the world a model, an opportunity, and invitation to be different. We have the capacity to change and it is in the small actions we take we recognize our great human capacity for love and collectivity. Angela Davis says we need to practice being unfree for the free world. How will we know if we don’t practice freedom? How do we know we don’t create guides and share our lessons and share our love? How will we know what the free world will look like if we aren’t imagining together. That’s what we need to be fighting for at this time. Cooperation and collectivity and that’s exactly what Press Press gives us.”

    - Nnennaya Amuchie

In centering collective working methods that are so counter to the ideologies and frameworks that are encountered daily in a capitalist society, Toolkit aims to honor and embrace our fundamental interconnectivity and interdependence as human beings. However, our toolkit in its current form is far from complete. We need you to join our effort to build and adapt this document to our current moment. In this spirit, we leave you with a few unanswered questions that are on our mind:

What does this period of our heightened bodily vulnerability put into focus?

How can we build intimacy into our collective work over digital space?

Where are you finding joy, grounding, and calm throughout this time?

What does our future look like?

Thank you for joining us!

Kimi Hanauer, Press Press
Lu Zhang, Institute for Expanded Research

In the fall of 2018, Press Press initiated a process of expanding our practice to both the west and east coasts of the United States, creating a new home base in Los Angeles, California, while investing in our existing home base of Baltimore, Maryland. In this moment of transition, growth, and inevitable change, the organization, in partnership with the Institute for Expanded Research, decided to hold space for learning and reflecting on our past projects since we started in 2014. As part of this process, in January 2019, during Press Press’s residency at the the George Peabody Library, 1 1 1
The George Peabody Library is a partner site to the Institute for Expanded Research, which acted as a studio and programming space for Press Press in 2017-2018 to facilitate research for this project.   we gathered two groups of Baltimore-based cultural organizers, artists, musicians, and community-oriented practitioners who have largely worked through cooperative, collective, and collaborative models for two evenings of dinner and conversation at the library. Throughout the evenings, we talked about collectivity and community. We talked about why we choose, or are often compelled, to do our work through collective models, the challenges we face, and advice we can offer on how to address our various difficulties. Most importantly, we talked about the circumstances, intentions, and desires that drive the collective work models we engage with, thrive within, and sometimes struggle through. We do this work because:

“We want to make something larger than ourselves. Sometimes you need people to hold you. Survival. We feel connected to a shared struggle. We challenge ourselves and others to learn and grow. There is power in solidarity. Collective work means shared resources and skills. We are working to create utopian experiential educational structures. It’s nourishing to work with others. Knowing how to work cooperatively is a basic building block for resisting the state. Non-transactional love, emotional work, anti-capitalism. Personal growth. Support and safety. Multiple perspectives enable more nuanced work. We need to address urgent problems together. In order to reflect on yourself, you need to know yourself in the context of others. Letting go of our egos. It’s fun to socialize with a purpose. Shared voice. Sharing privilege and sharing power.” 2 2 2
These quotes were collected from different participants in the workshops Press Press hosted in Baltimore when considering the question, “Why do we work in cooperative, collective, or collaborative ways?” Workshop attendees are mentioned in the credits of this publication.

The motives that drive this kind of work are broad, ranging from desire to survival, or even a combination of the two, from the joy that may emerge from working with others to fostering a sense of belonging for our own self-preservation. In doing this work that is so counter to the ideologies and frameworks we encounter in our day-to-day lives, we insist on the need to embrace our fundamental interconnectivity and interdependence as human beings. We do this by honoring multiple perspectives, picking up the slack when others can’t, understanding that individual wellness is a collective responsibility, challenging one another, sharing our power, and more.

This publication is organized into four main sections. 1. Prep Work: Working Definitions & Key Words outlines working definitions of terms that will reappear throughout the toolkit. 2. Ground Work considers challenges that may arise around collective organizational structures and includes several subsections: Roles & Hierarchy; Distribution of Labor; Money, Time, & Energy; and Authorship, Credit, & Visibility. 3. Growth Work focuses on cultural, spiritual, and communication challenges within collective organizations and includes several subsections: Accountability & Intention; Communication & Conflict; and Personal & Collective Growth. Finally, 4. Expanded Work aims to inspire further research and exploration of these topics and includes two subsections: Build Your Own Toolkit and Resource List. This toolkit is designed by and for cultural practitioners whose work is grounded in the values of equity, liberation, integrity, and difference. Throughout the toolkit, we include references, quotes, and resources from organizations and individuals we admire in order to complement the ideas that emerged more directly from our gatherings and inspire further research.

To create the toolkit that follows, we transcribed the notes and audio recordings of the questions that were raised within our conversations and the advice we shared with one another. After composing these materials into a shared document, contributors added edits and made adjustments to the text. Then, we gathered insights from other cultural practitioners, collectives, and organizations, either directly through editorial advice, or indirectly from research and reflection on past encounters, in order to produce a more extensive and pragmatic toolkit. This toolkit does not serve as a comprehensive guide to all problems that may arise within collective work. Rather, it reflects those who gathered together on those evenings, as well as those who shared editorial advice, along with some of the challenges we have faced and tools we’ve developed to address them.

Simply said, collective work is messy. Although Press Press holds many of the ideas on the pages ahead as values, we recognize that they are much easier said than done. We often struggle to negotiate the challenges of collective work and our biggest resource is advice from other practitioners in our expanded community. For this reason, we invite you to take these ideas and build, change, and redefine them as your own: Why and how do you build cooperative, collaborative, or collective-oriented practices that are grounded in equity, liberation, integrity, and difference?


DOWNLOAD A PDF OF THE
TOOLKIT HERE