 Hi. Welcome. Welcome to our two-day TV event of Conversations and Encounter. We are calling the Long Match. I am Matthew Glassman. My pronouns are he, him, and his. I am currently an ensemble member of Double Lips Theater. I am proud to be welcoming you on behalf of HowlRound Theater Commons. Jamie Galoon, who co-curated this week, this week-long series of essays and conversations and TV events that's devoted to the intersection of arts, culture, and commoning and beyond. It aims to underscore the unique role artists and culture workers play in imagining and shaping our future. I want to say first, I'm speaking to you today from the land that's now called Ashfield, but it's the homeland of the Nipmuc tribal people. Nipmuc, which means the people of the fresh water. I want to respect and honor Nipmuc tribal sovereignty and the Nipmuc people who continue to live on this land, practice traditions, and share their culture despite all that was stolen. And finally, there's acknowledgement and there's action, and the two must be intertwined. So action is recognizing and making changes to the dominant narrative that glorifies colonization and genocide of indigenous peoples of this area and beyond. It is to support movements of foot towards indigenous cultural preservation and it's supporting bills and initiatives to address use of imagery, mascots, and learning to respect cultural heritage of indigenous people. Consider also the action of supporting the land-backed campaign, which you can learn more about at land-backed.org slash manifesto. I invite you all to introduce yourselves in the chat, as well as acknowledge the land from where you're watching from today. So the Long Match. The Long Match essentially is referring to all the different ways of carrying embers of fire over long distances for long migrations, moss, loam, bark, or other materials. It remains a practice and a technology and tradition of indigenous people and others for having live embers after a long journey and during a long journey. Not only helpful for starting a fire in a new camp, but for the continuity that those embers provide. It's those embers that we bring from our home. These live embers, the same fire that provided warmth, that provided healing, stories, and all the ways of knowing and technologies of becoming. This Long Match, this is the animating metaphor to ourselves, to all of us, to widen our circles beyond the theater. Of course, this is HowlRound, which is a theater commons, but beyond the theater and even beyond the notion of commenting, which even though that's what we're exploring this week, this is an invitation to think beyond circles. To say that we're on this journey, and this is what is essential for all of our continuity, is to acknowledge that we are alive right now on a continuum of the past, the present, and the future. During this decline of the Anthropocene amidst climate disaster, amidst revolution to overcome historic injustice, who knows what change will all live to see, but we are alive. And this is a moment to say, this is what I call an ember. This is what I call fire. This is what I call hope. And this is what I call possibility. That's why this is the Long Match. This is where this name comes from. And that's what this invitation is. I appreciate that you're here today. It's with this spirit of mind that I'm so honored to introduce Marina Lopez and Caroline Woolard who'll speak to the work of the Art.coop Project Solidarity, Not Charity, Grant Making in the Solidarity Economy. Today they will be sharing what is emerging from their work since publishing their landmark report and conducting incredible co-learning sessions in the fall, which I feel privileged to have taken part in. And additionally, they are inviting two extraordinary artists and practitioners who are living this moment and who are carrying these embers. Finally, before I pass it off, I want to say that there will be time for a Q&A at the end. So at any moment, you feel moved to make a comment or ask a question. You don't need to wait until the end. You can put it into the chat and they will be kept and hopefully time to emerge in a Q&A session. Lastly, today is part one of this two-day conversation. I invite you to come back tomorrow where we will be having a live streaming of an in-person gathering hosted by Double Edge Theater with guests from the Ocoteo Cultural Center, the Latinx Theater Commons, the National Black Theater, David Bollier, and Double Edge Theater and many others. So please come back again tomorrow. Okay. Thank you so much. It's such a privilege to turn it over to Marina and Caroline. Thank you so much, Matthew. Thank you for your beautiful words and invitation. As Matthew said, my name is Marina Lopez or Marina, whatever feels good for you. I use she, her pronouns. For those who aren't seeing me, I have olive skin and dark hair that's pulled away from my face and some epic Victorian wallpaper in my background. I also co-organized with art.co-op and we are so grateful for the work that HowlRound Theater Commons and Double Edge Theater are doing in their communities and in the broader solidarity economy movement. Thank you so much for your invitation today to share this time with each of you. Yeah, and as we get settled in today, I want to first acknowledge the unceded land, which I'm calling in from, Jarujiji, which means a nice place to stop and rest, or so-called Eureka, California, is the ancestral homeland of the Weot tribe and has been since time immemorial. And despite the violent tactics of settler colonialism, the Weot tribe, culture, and people are still here today. This acknowledgement and really all land acknowledgments are a small part, like Matthew said, of a larger and ongoing process of repair with Indigenous people who are the original stewards of this land and whose exclusion and erasure has shaped the land upon which we are on. And so I want to honor and acknowledge the Weot people, their elders, both past and present here today, and the future generations to come. In my community here in Humboldt, California, we also acknowledge this history and the resiliency of the Weot tribe by paying a voluntary honor tax. And this voluntary tax acknowledges the sovereignty of the original stewards of this land and is another small step in the process of repair and being in right relationship. And I encourage each of you to find out how your community is acknowledging the sovereignty of Indigenous people of this land and cultivating practices of reciprocity. Double-edged theater with the guidance and partnership of Okateo Cultural Center is a beautiful example of artists involved in land-back practices. Where land owned by double-edged is being returned. And art.coop we're also so grateful to Rhonda Anderson of Okateo Cultural Center for beautifully calling us in to learn in public and practice repair and to continue our learning. And now I'm going to pass it on to Caroline. Thank you, Marina. Hi, everyone. My name is Caroline Willard. I'm a co-organizer of art.coop with Marina, with Nati Lanaras and Sonja Erika. I am a white woman with short hair and a flower shirt zooming into you from Berlin in Germany. On the chat area, I noticed many people aren't in there. It can be hard to find. If you look at your browser underneath the live screen, right below it, or sometimes to the right, you'll see the chat. And we encourage you to log in so that you can share your name and begin to connect with one another. It's important to us that you ask questions as we go along and share your work so that we can begin to build this cultural economy we want together right now. If you're able to, I encourage you to again, look at the chat right below the live stream. It might be to the right to type in any name you like. Could be an incognito name. And let us know what brings you here. What is your name? What land are you a guest on? What work are you doing? How do you want to connect with each other? Let us know. This is one place where you can make connections and build power together. You can also begin to follow us online if you don't know about art co op and you're interested, just go to art co op co op co op, or find us online at underscore art co op. And Instagram and Twitter are places where we post jobs in the solidarity economy movement, and also inspiration. You can add yourself to our directory online at art co op as well. And we really thank you for being present here together. We're here. This is a long, long project, many generations behind us, and many generations to come. I'll pass it back to Marina now. Thank you so much, Caroline. Yes. Thank you for that beautiful introduction. We are art co op. I've been co organizing with not D. Lee notice who's pictured here with the beautiful floral head, headcart crown and Caroline Willard. And also Sonya Erika, who's not pictured, but she holds down the socials and is amazing. And together we've been co organizing art co op. So art co op exists to grow the solidarity economy movement. And so we do this by centering systems change work. That's led by artists and culture bears. As Momoko Aqua says, it's about community ownership and democratic governance for political, cultural and economic power. So in other words, who owns and then who decides. But before we get into that, I want to share a little bit of the history and background of how art co op came to be because it's a beautiful story. So in March of 2020, not D and Caroline were commissioned by grant makers in the arts to write a report on other economies that are happening around around the country. And they decided to write strictly about the solidarity economy and how artists were innovating within this space. So together they interviewed over 100 artists and culture workers working across the US, who are innovating models for self determination, democratic ownership and community wealth. This incredible report was released about a year ago in March of 2021, and was received with tremendous energy and excitement. It's now become required reading for justice funders, woman of color in the arts, and many more organizations and grant making institutions. And so at the end of after publishing the report, they convened all of the folks that they've interviewed. And the group shared this desire to continue creating space to learn together to meet to socialize and to be in community. So in September and October of 2021, we held a seven week learning series, which Matthew mentioned at the beginning, called study into action. And this was with 105 cultural innovators and seven facilitators. The first hour was open to the public with over 800 people learning together. And these talks spanned conversations about the role of the artists in movement building in the saw and within the solidarity economy. We talked about permanent real estate cooperatives and the legal side of land trust and permanently affordable housing, as told by Greg Jackson of prepared nations and Janelle Orsey at the Sustainable Economies Law Center. We also talked about the role of artists in democratic investment with Boston Ujima project. And then as we moved into the second hour, the 105 people who were included interviewees from the report, grant makers who were seeking ways to deepen their learning about field shifts, and folks who engage deeply with the website and the report since this launch met enclosed groups to continue learning together through conversation and creative exercises led by their facilitators. So this series really offered an opportunity to learn with one another and to build relationships across cultural, institutional and geographical spaces. And after this series, we invited and received feedback from participants, interviewees and people who'd reached out to us from around the world to learn about art.coop. And we asked them this question. What is the role of art.coop in the cultural sector and in the solidarity economy ecosystem? Here's what we learned. So we heard from more than 100 organizers, grant makers, artists, popular educators, that our role is to grow the solidarity economy movement by centering systems change work that is led by artists and cultural pairs. So here's how we do this. Here's how we are doing this. We're continuing to connect cultural innovators across silos in the solidarity economy movement. So this year, we're working on a directory of national creative coops, collectives, worker self directed nonprofits, and more to show the cultural economy we want is not only possible, but it already exists. It's happening right now in real time, and it can be cultivated with intention. And so then this national directory is going to be plugged into an international directory that's being created with the International Cooperative Alliance and Docs at Avisi, which is an advanced creative co-op network in Italy. And Art.coop already has an internal directory. Caroline mentioned, if you want to plug into that, you can visit our website art.coop. And it's a small online directory that folks can add to it. But as we grow this national directory, we're really excited that BJ Matthew was with us today from HowlRound is going to be a key advisor in this project. And this kind of cross collaboration between groups is another way that we are connecting across silos and strengthening our networks. We're also doing this by amplifying research, inspiration, resources and events that lift up this work. So this year we're continuing to do narrative shift work by presenting a report at events at the invitation of practitioners, organizers, academics and grant makers. And we're also continuing to write and curate articles to share with our community. And another big piece of this work is the amazing social media presence that Nati Linares and Sonia Erica have brought to life. So if you aren't already, we highly encourage you to follow Art.coop on Instagram. We'll share that in the chat because there you'll find these amazing resources and tools to learn about different models that are possible within the solidarity economy. Things like cooperatives and land trusts and time banks and so many more. And there they also share amazing events like this one today. Every week I love this. Every week they put together a roundup of solidarity economy values aligned job listings. So ways that you can find equity and joy in your workplace. And they share examples of what the solidarity economy looks like in real time in different communities. Another piece of this work is about educating grant makers about how to move money to multi-year, self-determined and systems change efforts that are led by artists. This year, with grant makers and the arts, we're leading a series of monthly funder discussions that invites artists in and culture workers to share with grant makers about how they are utilizing their skills to not only create thought provoking work and thought provoking art, but also how they're working as economic developers. So artists like double-edged theater and obvious agency who show us what it's like when artists own the creative production of their work through a cooperative model, or groups like Intelligent Mischief who weave together these new and old technologies to show us what a generative business model that designs with black joy, black liberation and black imagination at the center looks and feels like. And this series thus far has attracted close to 200 grant makers from across the US. And that really matters because it signifies that grant makers are wanting to learn about how they can engage in systems change work that addresses root causes rather than the symptoms of inequity. And these conversations demonstrate how grant makers can play a role in the transformation of the sector by following the lead of black, indigenous and people of color creatives who are innovating models for self-determination and community wealth. And we have our final session in this funder discussion series on April 13th with Carlton Turner, the founder of Mississippi Center for Cultural Production, and Alan Quabena of Rimpong, who's the co-founder of Zeal. We hope you'll join us and we'll share links in the chat. And this work also looks like when we study together in spaces like this session today to learn about the ways in which artists and culture bears are utilizing their skills to innovate economic models that cultivate a culture of care, cooperation and reciprocity, and then practicing the skills to spread the power and the wealth and to root it in our communities. So this year we're really excited to have been invited by Yorba Buena Center for the Arts to produce a podcast about systems change work being led by artists and culture bears, and we'll invite special guests from the art.coop community. And we're co-producing the podcast with Meerkat Media Collective, also a solidarity economy values aligned group. So the pilot will include nine episodes with original music, professional audio, and audio to animated text highlights that we can share on social media and for online learning modules. In addition, we're creating and co-developing this toolkit with Springboard for the arts that's based on the art.coop report, the solidarity not charity report that we mentioned in the beginning. And the PDF workbook is going to support practitioners in self-paced learning, as well as educators who want to bring this knowledge to their communities and what's really cool is it's going to pair with the podcast. So you can listen to the podcast which will bring you through a learning module and then pair it with this workbook. So as we do all of this work together and we strive to build these new systems that are centered on practices of care and cooperation, we're internally asking questions like how can we cultivate a culture of care that allows for us to follow the lead of our bodies? What are we learning from resistance? What does compassionate accountability look and feel like? And how can we reframe money as a tool that affords one the ability to show up joyfully rather than a measure of one's value as a human being? So these are some of the ways that art.coop is joyfully creating a small part of the solidarity economy ecosystem. And if you're still asking why culture, why is culture centered? Is systems change work? Because for most people it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of our current systems of exploitation, extraction, and greed. But as Aisha Schillingford of Intelligent Mischief has said, if we can't dream it we can't make it real. And so this is the work of culture bears like our guests today. And that's a little bit about art.coop. So I'd like to introduce you all to our first guest today. And when I think about what it means to extract ourselves from these current extractive cis-heteropatriarchal white supremacist colonial capitalist system and work towards collectively building a different kind of society, one that is founded on principles of cooperation, pluralism, solidarity, collective stewardship, and regeneration, I ask myself what is the one thing that can consistently shows up in both systems? It's our bodies, these bodies that have navigated these systems of oppression. It is these bodies that have both endured and delivered violence across many generations. It is our bodies here today doing the labor of abolition, imagining possible futures, and feeling even if for just a moment what liberation and safety can feel like. So when I think about where do we begin with building these new societies and what tools do we need? I come back to what I shared in the beginning and what Matthew so beautifully shared in the beginning around what are the practices of reciprocity and repair that we're cultivating and how before we can demand any more from our bodies we must first mend that relationship because for so many of us, myself included, the most logical response to living within these oppressive and extractive systems has been to disembodied, to detach from the full spectrum of sensation and wisdom that resides within us, and in order to build a society that centers care, care of the planet, care of one another, we must first know how to care for ourselves. And this is what is so beautiful about the work that Clara Taracape is, our first guest, is doing. She is using all of her faculties as an artist, her technical skills, her creativity, craft, imagination, and applying those in a field that does not often partner with artists. And then she's taking the knowledge generated from that partnership and bringing it back into her community, sharing tools that signal to our brains that it is safe to be embodied, affording those who experience her work to begin that process of repair. So it is my absolute honor to introduce Clara Taracape. I first met Clara during art.coop's seven-week learning series study into action that started in the fall of 2021, and her poetic and truth-filled words opened the series up on the first session, and her care and energy are woven into the work that art.coop does, and I've really loved having the chance to get to know her since we first met. So Clara plays viola in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is an art and care labor theorist, and also a neuroscientist and co-director of the Northwestern Music and Medicine program, which is a program involved in MRI and EEG research of music in the brain. It's amazing. She specializes in researching interventions for epilepsy and the neuro-psychiatric syndromes of dementia. Clara's work in art and care labor theory has been featured in the Taracape lectures, the Festival Internacial de Musica, art.coop, anti-capitalism for artists, Misuzu Shobo, a Jacobin, against the current and frontiers in neurology. Ms. Taracape is a founding member of Shred, an art and care labor think tank. She is in a band called Nireas with H. Anton Reel, and together they will soon release a new album, let me see if I can get this name right, called Jig, Jig and Tamoki. I don't think I said that right, you'll have to correct me Clara. And she's also a graduate of the University of Chicago. So without further due, Clara, please take it away. I'm so honored to be here with you and thank you for being here together. Before the pandemic, I had been designing dementia arts programs at Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine. But when the pandemic began, I asked myself, what can I do to help in this moment in time? This inquiry led me to research and design a pilot program for Northwestern Medicine to support the patients in the neuro ICU, neurosurgery and the epilepsy monitoring unit. It was a pilot to support them with the isolation, stress and anxiety they experienced due to the pandemic restrictions. In preparing for the pilot, I asked myself some questions. I asked myself, what is safety? What does that feel like? Do we in our profoundly dangerous society really know what safety feels like? How do we know when we are safe? Then I started researching how the nervous system recognizes safety. The Northwestern Music and Medicine program was founded as a result of this pilot program and our team developed a form of clinical music called clinically designed improvisatory music. Now let me share some slides. So here it is, clinically designed improvisatory music is, let me put into slideshow, my apologies. Here we go, there we go. What we designed two years ago at the Northwestern Music and Medicine program, I'll call it CDEM for short because it's a really long name. Oops, I'm sorry I'm not very good at this. Through developing CDEM, we discovered that after 20 minutes of this kind of clinical music, it reduces blood pressure 10 to 15 points, reduces scalp and facial tension, so the face relaxes, it reduces heart and respiratory rates, and stimulates the vagal nerve, which is very, very important for calm. It might not have been yesterday when you saw your last EEG, but this is what it looks like. EEGs look like this, and what is amazing about EEGs is when you're calm, the EEGs really kind of, there's, they follow each other. Multiple lines are in sync and if you're anxious or if you're having a seizure, the lines no longer correspond together. There were multiple populations that I was with during the pilot, and a significant number of the patients were in the epilepsy monitoring unit, and when our team got the data back from the statistics team, analyzing how the brains processed this music, I cried. They gave me the data and put it in these colorful data maps, and if you look here, if you see my cursor, this is a pre-treatment, pre-music, you know, just normal sitting around in the epilepsy unit. This red means that the brain is very, very, very active, and this is the first 20 minutes of sedum music, and the blue indicates an increase in the alpha-beta ratio within the brain, which is alpha-beta, a higher alpha-beta ratio means the brain is a lot more organized and it's calmer. You can see here, it's getting calmer back here, it's deeply calm, and on the sides, this is the auditory cortex where where the brain processes sound, and as you see, it's still more active than the other parts. However, if you compare it to the pre-sedum auditory cortex, it's working less. Right here, it's not as dense as here. 20 to 40 minutes into the sedum, the alpha-beta ratio is spreading through the brain, the auditory cortex isn't working that hard at all, and it's really beautiful how the frontal lobe is also getting deeper into calm, and this is about an hour or two after the music, and as you can see, this brain is not the same as this brain. So, in two weeks, we will be presenting this data at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting in Seattle, and we also published our findings in the frontiers in neurology back in December. I have a lot of dreams for what this music can be. Our dreams is we need more funds for research to understand the basic science behind the neural networks impacted by sedum. Another dream is to start public walk-in sedum rooms for the treatment of hypertension, stress, and anxiety, which are major drivers of illness in society. I wish that art as care will become a normal part of our society and economics, and in fact tomorrow we have a community room from 12 to 1230 of sedum music for hypertension, stress, and anxiety, and so it's happening already. One more dream that I have is to research the possibility of bringing sedum to public schools as part of social emotional learning, and this is also already starting to happen. I've talked a lot about theater, I mean about music, and I know this is a theater-oriented audience, and I want to say that I haven't yet dealt into theater, but I have looked at some of the medical literature, and I think the implications for health and justice are vast if we do the research on more research on theater and see the public health implications. So I'm very hopeful and I think there's a lot of work to be done. So I'm going to pivot back to sedum, clinically designed improvisatory music. This clinical music is based on what the nervous system signals as safety. It's slow, without much tempo or rhythm. The pitches I will play, I will demonstrate for you about 70 minutes. The pitches I will play are from a very narrow range, narrow pitch range, because the brain stem signals as dangerous, very high pitches and very low pitches. So kind of a middle human vocal range is what our body really responds to as safe. The music is uncomplicated and some distinct features of this clinical music is that the volume decreases slowly from a medium volume to very soft to nothing, and that has a huge effect on the brain. We're researching this still. And after the decrease of sound to nothing, there is a silence of about 10 to 15 seconds. Some studies show when there's silence between sound, the brain just comes alive and kind of re-networks itself. So some people fall asleep during sedum, others after the 10-minute mark will begin to have waking dreams and visualizations with colors splashing across their minds. A lot of people start feeling their bodies because of the vagal response and also how music flows through the insula and allows us to feel ourselves, feel ourselves and feel our own emotions. But there are also a few people who have adverse reactions. I have seen this and so I want to make sure that if someone here starts to experience anxiety, they are welcome to shut off their sound until I finish playing or if you wish to persist to ground yourself by tapping or patting your arm or leg. During sedum, you don't need to do anything. You don't have to try to have a particular experience. I'm about to play, so please make yourself comfortable. You can lie down, you can recline or whatever it is. I just hope you're in the most comfortable position and we'll get started in just a moment. Thank you so much. That was a taste of about seven minutes of clinically designed improvisatory music. Please feel free to drop a comment in the chat. I'm really curious to hear what you experienced and again, thank you for being here. Wow, thank you so much Clara. If you're in the chat, please let us know how that felt for you. I am seeing open, silent moments were luxurious, melancholy acceptable. A massage for my brain. When you said it organizes the brain, Clara, I was thinking about all the ways that we can organize somatically, collectively, in community. We appreciate you so much. Cedric sang, so exciting to hear her work. I often share Clara's presentation on art.coop too. That was great. Curious how we can do this with human voice. Yes, there's so much individual collective and community organizing that can happen with this. We appreciate you, Clara. Thank you. If you're just joining us, you can see below the live stream, the chat. Feel free to log in with any name that feels comfortable to you and to share how that was for you. Yes. It's definitely possible with the human voice, Clara says. Okay, so here we are reorganized in our brains and our collective bodies across time zones, across nations. We are gathered together to imagine the cultural economy that we want and that is already here that can be connected and cultivated with intention. Imagine that you do not need to be a sellout or a starving artist. All around the country, the artists who have been most harmed by our current systems are creating worker-owned culture, solidarity and care. We often don't get to connect with artists even right next door, let alone across the country or around the world. But today it is my great honor to connect with a leader in the cultural and the cooperative movement in the Basque country in northern Spain. We're about to hear from artist Oyane Amorio, who is the co-founder of Lane Arts, the official bachelor's degree in entrepreneurial leadership and innovation in arts and creative industries at Mondragon Cooperative University in the Basque country in northern Spain. She's exhibited around the world and has been recognized at the Bilbao European School Xenoma Fest. And as artists are looking to spaces of teaching and learning that practice the cultural economies we want, it's so exciting for us at art.coop to learn from Oyane as she and her team are already building an art school within the cooperative movement. Again an official arts degree within a cooperative university, part of the world's largest group of worker-owned businesses. Oyane, thank you so much for your vision for this program and for being here. I'd love it if you started by telling us more about Mondragon, what is it, and what is Lane? Thank you very much Caroline and thank you very much. It's such a pleasure to be after Clara because that's now this moment and thank you for the introduction. Yes, Mondragon Corporation is one of the largest cooperative group in the world. It has already 66 years old, so it was founded in 1956. So we had like a long run. Mondragon Cooperative Group is based in a town called Mondragon in the Spain, in the Basque country, and one of the values are the cooperation between the individuals, the participation, the social interaction, and the innovation. These were like the principal objectives when the Mondragon Cooperative System was created and it was created to put the human in the center and to give the ownership of the companies to the workers. Not having one person that can decide for everyone but being all of us capable of deciding what they're going to do and how they're going to spend the money of the corporation. Just, I don't want to be very historical. You can't do research and there are a lot of documents in the internet, but just to give a bit of context, it was one of the priors called Jose Marie Aretha, that created together with some youngsters of that town, that created that style of working together in a cooperative way. And this is very significant because one of the principal aims of the Mondragon Corporation has been always in giving space and teaching youngsters in order them to become the new generations that can continue with that social innovative model. So, yeah, briefly, this is the Mondragon Corporation. And can you share what was your vision for Lane and also how you were invited to work on that vision? How does that connect to the cooperative model itself? Yeah, that is a very good question. I studied arts in the public university of the vast country and for me it was pretty shocking that since the first day they were calling us to the students that it was going to be very difficult for us to become a professional artist. They were saying that maybe one in 100 you could work on the culture but not all of you. And for me it was shocking and I had this kind of crisis after the university where I didn't know what to do with myself. I had the knowledge into the arts but I didn't know what to do and how to create a project. So, kind of randomly I met some people from Mondragon team academy. I didn't know anything from them even though I was from the vast country I have been raised in Bilbao. I didn't know anything about them and when I started to get to know more about the model, the way of thinking, the way of doing, I was really surprised on how can these people be doing those things, maybe without knowing. And I met around 10 youngsters that they were, all of them working in a cooperative way. They were having projects that were based on their passions. They knew how to work and I was very surprised that they had that knowledge that I didn't have. And when I met José María Luz Arraga that he he was one of the co-founders of Mondragon team academy that is the entrepreneurial side of the Mondragon corporation that is focused on training and teaching inside the university. I asked them, is there anything in the world similar to this cooperative way learning by doing a style that you do but focused in the arts? Because I was wanting it for me, for my training and he told me, no, but if you want we can make it. So I was a bit naive and I didn't know, yes, I had that vision but it was more intuitive that I wanted to be through that path that I thought that this would be great for artists but I didn't know how to do it. And we worked together a few months even even years to see how this vision could adapt to what I was thinking, what the probability was because it wasn't that easy to when there as an artist and a cultural agent inside the Mondragon corporation they have been very industrialized, they have been working with industrial areas, with food, health and so on but not that much with culture. So at the beginning it was like why do we need that, why art is important, why culture is important and we decided even though Mondragon is kind of flexible and it's easy to work and to propose new things, always you need to pass some barriers, you know. So we decided to add that layer of culture and art into an existing degree that was lame, that was it was focused on training those people that in the future they will became change makers and innovators and that they will learn in a cooperative way. So we added we took that methodology, educational methodology and we saw how to add that to the arts and culture and since that we have been working on building that, as we call lame arts, this baccalaureate degree which is official by Mondragon University. Yeah when we tell people about this they can't even believe it and if people have questions in the chat you can put them in. I wanted to hear a little bit about how it works so that if people are interested they understand what is a cooperative way of learning. For example I know many people, myself included, said ah so who are the teachers and you said we don't have teachers and it's like ah of course. Can you share more about how it works if people want to get involved? Yes, yes as it was very important that if we want to be the cooperatives of the future to train the youngsters of today and we cannot train them as the way that has been done until now so we needed to rethink on the ways and this team that debuted Mondragon Team Academy a lot like 10 years ago they were taking different methodologies from different parts of the world mainly from Finland. So the method is based on learning by doing methodology and on a teamwork methodology that since the very beginning they enter on the university as a team and they need to work together with all the things that that means this means that they need to work on the communication they need to be able to empathize with each other they need to be able to share to learn together you know so they are not individuals anymore but they need to look for the better for everyone not only one person and at the same time we show them the path but we don't tell them what do they need to do. So it's kind of learning by doing methodology and learning by failing too they fail a lot because it's based on this on this project based style of learning that they develop in the case of playing art since the very beginning since the first day they develop different projects in the creative and good value industries music and fashion design whatever they choose and they start working on projects so they need to think on how do we make the business model but how do we make social impact how do we create artistic innovation how do we coordinate as a team how do we continue you know all of these elements that that you need to work in the reality but the challenging that they are 18 year olds so they are at the same time getting to know like who are they what do they want to do so it's kind of a of a challenge yeah and also what we do is we mix them with international teams and they stay each year in one country so they can really understand the context and be able to understand the needs of its place amazing yeah amazing and as you're dreaming for yourself and also for the people that you're working with what is your vision for a cooperative and cultural industry like how would it work what are some projects that you want to see or that other participants want to see this is a very interesting question to tell you the truth we are still fighting for the cooperative movement entering the culture and even though inside Montvagon they really see the value of the industrial cooperatives but some people they don't understand the value of cultural cooperatives so we are still on that stage of needing to prove to people that this is a path and this is a way and even though there are a lot of colleagues from Bilbao artists that they don't even know what's the cooperative or they don't know how to work in a cooperative no so for me it's very important to be able to let's say spread the word that people can understand what does this mean can't explain on how to do that and be able to to prove that we can have jobs in culture that we can't make a living in culture that we can make social impact we can make economical environmental impact and culture is not something aside no or this is not something for that one out of one hundred but that more people can be there and for me one thing that I always think about and that I try to talk about with about that with the people that have joined Lane Arts is that we need to rethink on who is made in culture where are we showing the culture and what are we defining as culture because until now we have had this clear path of white male their sexual adults doing art so in a very specific certain spaces in these big museums or calling arts or culture to very specific certain practices and we need to rethink of what do we do how where and one of that part inside that for me it's thinking on how do we organize ourselves to go to that direction and I see clearly that practicing is one of the ways so yes I don't know if I answered your your question but I see a lot of things and I think that we have just started at least I feel like that in my area and there are a lot of things to do I see the willingness and I'm very very happy to be in places like here because I feel that there are more people that are thinking like this and I feel the hope that we can continue and we can do things together yeah thank you so much soon I know we're going to open it up for all of us to be in conversation I wanted to hear if there's anything that you think is a common misunderstanding or a confusion about what is a cooperative for example Nathie was saying doesn't cooperative and industry seem like opposites anything you want to clarify as people here cooperative or the cooperative movement yes some people they they feel that cooperatives are kind of associations where you cannot get revenue or that it's very difficult to get organized or very difficult to make these decisions those kind of things and some people even though they don't know the concept so for me it's like understanding the thing but also leaving my example this is something that we say a lot but through showing people that this is possible to do and even by inviting them to join cooperative work sometime and to work together they will see which are the ways but yes I agree that there are a lot of people that are yet instrumental towards cooperatives and I have felt that in vast countries so I imagine that that outside it will be same now so yes yes and to tell you like one small anecdote one of the biggest supermarkets in the vast country is a cooperative know that a supermarket is that's a normal thing and a lot of people they don't know that this is a cooperative or they know but they don't know what does it mean and for me this is this is meaningful yeah yeah thank you I know at art.coop one of the reasons that the postings for jobs in the cooperative and solidarity economy movement that Nati and Sonja are posting are so meaningful is that people see ah there's another way that I can make a living and also have joyful work that is dignified that respects me and this is also why we're so excited to make a directory so people can see oh there's someone near me that I can work with who actually will care about what I do yeah thank you so much it's really amazing I think people will be watching this especially in Turtle Island the United States to know that you have generations behind you in the cooperative movement and you're innovating in arts and culture right now so yeah we hope we can keep working together we really appreciate you and how about we all come on Marina and Clara so we can talk together and Matthew yes and if anyone has questions you can put them in the chat again it's right below the live stream we can also ask each other questions if you have questions for each other yeah Matthew you want to start us off I have this thing in my head right now which part of me is saying don't go there and a part of me is saying jump so I'm going to jump because I'm really curious about this and I'm hoping it is more generative than anything else so bear with me for a second um first of all thank you all for the work you're doing and what you're following it should never be uh under valued the what it is required to manifest anything from a piece of art to a study to these fluid infrastructures and schools of thought um this is um I just want to say it let's I want to just sit in how profound and meaningful it is um yes this is a theater platform and a theater audience um what's most important for me about theater is that it is live and in person it is physical just as a concert is physical except it is cross-disciplinary um ritualistic and ceremonial and and embodied and um when you're just speaking about um this work uh and uh madrigan is that right I say right um I'm called to mind the Spanish anarchists and this is where I was hesitating but I for me this idea this notion of the long match is important that it's it's it's it's everything that is of the spirit that is is trying to be resilient amidst large forces right and for me that period of time in the late uh 19th century early 20th century in the Spanish anarchists it was often described as a move and let's just say also that especially the United States uh anarchism is so grossly misinterpreted just like cooperatives are and you know it's just ridiculous but it's often a movement described as libidinal and spontaneous and um and of the spirit and so I'm just feeling these connections between your work and Clara's work which and this ramifications of this is work that goes from the inner that is libidinal and physical and in the nervous system uh and in the subconscious and in our dreaming and in our physical dreaming and it ripples into all of these structures and ways of connecting outward and ways of learning and relearning which is a foot in all of this work and I was just curious and I was afraid of getting wonky about this but are this can you say something about it if this if like the how you're the are you on the continuum with the Spanish anarchists and this is resonated my can feel free to jump in anybody that was more of a statement to get us going but that was just excited about this sorry go ahead yeah uh like I don't know if I understood right your your question we're mentioning the the similarities between the Spanish anarchists and the cooperative movement oh yes okay yeah I don't know if I have enough knowledge but it's true that for me the cooperative way of the cooperatives in is a way of hacking the system no and being on the system and doing things differently I think that somebody was asking on the top if cooperatives in an industry is just the opposite and in one dragon they demonstrated that they could be on the industrial side by being but being a cooperative and it was this this history that these priors that created the whole the whole movement no there was already one company that was led by a very authoritarian boss in that in that town and he with few youngsters he decided to hack it and to create another company in the same town but but owned by those young people no so for me it has a lot of similarities and yes it can be an anarchist way of acting because at the end um for me what the cooperative had is like this action-based or action-oriented they think no that at the end they gather together and they work together so it can have kind of similarities I I never I never thought about that but and maybe we should we should start and keep a deeper like a deeper but I think that it can it can become this inheritance yes thank you thank you for that thanks for entertaining that um can I add another question in for Clara or someone else like to jump in okay great um because Clara and listening to your work I'm really called to the sacred and to awe and wonder and that the power of that which um you know uh we it's healing right and so we're wondering about and it's reminding me of Claudia Oliveros and opera part and and these traditions of sacred music and I'm wondering as you're working in educational institutions and also obviously you have your artistic output and these projects but I was curious about structures like the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and and and if they're you're finding ways to make ubiquitous this access to to what to me feels like sacred and awe even though it has the name clinically designed in propository music I think I feel them together are you are you encountering ways of meeting institutions like Chicago Symphony Orchestra to find out how to make access ubiquitous like available to these experiences of what you're what you're developing um I have to say that I have not been working with the symphony or any symphonies for a particular reason our economic models are not compatible uh they there's no in my opinion there's actually no overlap between heterodox economy solidarity economy and in symphonic economies in general um because of how the boards are constituted and what their aims are um and um so my my goal is to work in the community that I live in and I live in Woodlawn which um has um a rate of cardiovascular related death which is three times the Chicago average and um I really dream of instituting public um CDEM rooms for various reasons we still have so much research to do in psychiatry and pediatrics to see what the applications of this kind of music um might be and so um I think symphonies in general they have an identity that is purportedly global but I my identity is local and I aim to work um in different ways not just here but in also within restorative justice as we think about what happens with um actions that are impulsive or uh in one case where I'm talking to an institution that um works with restorative justice um questions of hate and aggression and how does that flow in the brain and um you know when you talk about awe which is you know the sacred and awe what what is what's that abyss between that and maybe aggression or someone shooting someone else like what is that you know how can we go from one place to another and when I think about what art can do and I'm not just talking about the stuff that I do in terms of clinical um uh music but I also think about theater and the implications of what theater making does for the brain it really develops the theory of mind it develops the insula it develops so many parts of the brain that if we do that um we will have a different society we'll have a safer society um I do have a dream of art and sedum as a force of abolition and we are actually working on this right now in Chicago um because there are a number of schools who um the LLSCs um local school councils um which have voted against having um school resource officers or police in their schools and um I demonstrated sedum for an elder woman and she just said okay this has to go to our local high school that's it and so we're in discussion here in Chicago and various different schools I'm also in discussion with um uh restorative justice institution out in California and um I have high hopes for what art can do what art can do for people all across different spectra um and so I'm very hopeful and I'm very hopeful because I'm here at art co-op with like-minded people who really do see all the things that dovetail together and how we might work together to go forward and take these steps it's very powerful hmm thank you Clara I was wondering if you Clara and also Ayane if you could share moments where you felt like the art economies that are not working uh you were so clearly uh fed up with that that you knew there has to be a different way or a different step and if that's too negative a story and you don't want to share you can also share a moment where you felt okay I'm home you know I'm home in myself I'm home in my community in this work that gives me joy I feel seen I'm I'm hurt you know either of those I'd love to hear that for people who are out there feeling like lonely you know exploited we'd love to hear that yes thank you for the question uh I think that seems the very first moment that I told to my teachers in high school that I was going to go to an art school they told me that I have I'm a girl with really good marks and I couldn't study arts no since that very first moment I I got that soft and it resonates during my life when you were looking for jobs or where you were applying to grants because I don't know if in other countries but in the most country the arts they work a lot with grants from museums galleries or from the government so there has been those moments where you work a lot you have been one year for example working hard for developing a project and suddenly a grant you you don't get that grant no so those moments where you feel so fed up so alone too because um here I don't know if you know the best country but it's very very small small countries much more smaller than Spain and much more smaller than other countries in Europe so the grants are limited and the spaces for artists in museums scholars are very limited we don't have that much calories we don't have like that much at the same and the people that evaluate those those art works are very few and we all know them and it's a very small circle no so so when you enter on that circle and uh there is one basic theory or what art should be and when you don't fit in that standards you really felt alone and fed up and sometimes I felt maybe I should quit and I should do another thing because I'm good organizing or I'm good planning so I will go to another field but then it's something inside me that that it says that I need to fight and that's why I started working on that project is I have the feeling that I need to fight and it had their responsibility not only for me but for the others coming to I don't know if it makes sense but I feel it yes the fight absolutely yeah and Clara you are going to share um so for me over the years I've been teaching at different music festivals at different countries and I've so taught here in the United States and what I encountered over and over was terror I mean these music students are terrified and it's it it doesn't matter where they are are at what country last year I did workshops for Juilliard students who were terrified they were terrified of their future they were more terrified of the known future than the unknown future like they were terrified of having to play in an orchestra for the rest of their life and that that was their only option and for and the unknown was just something that that didn't exist at all for them there was no possibility and there are so many musicians in particular who feel very hopeless and I think that turning to music medicine as a sub department of neurology is very exciting because I think from that it shows that there just aren't enough musicians anywhere to fulfill the needs of society I mean we don't even we haven't even studied enough how clinical music could be applied for education for depression for anxiety I mean major syndromes that exist in modern society how can we change society and I think this is a very exciting hopeful question to be connected to and I've never been more hopeful you know in in that way and I really hope that musicians will be open to this because I think there's a very conservative backing in classical music that limits thinking makes makes musicians very cognitively inflexible which is very dangerous because cognitive inflexibility leads to some very dark places yeah thank you this is really important for us I think at art.coop especially to think clota you were someone who downloaded the report and read every single footnote so I'm like clota is this person doing this neuroscience playing at the highest level in music doing healing and restorative justice organizing in your community and you're also reading every damn footnote so I'm like when you think artists are some people out in the clouds like just not able to get it together you know we're like herding cats I'm like you need to learn about what clota is doing look at what oyane amorio is doing you're creating your own bachelors in a cooperative in the biggest network of worker cooperatives in the world with culture at the center I think for us especially I can say for marina and me it's been so transformative to be in spaces with each other where we get to meet people like you and also get to know each other like I didn't know marina before this I didn't know nati before this so I think if people are listening they're like this is not real or why are these people so optimistic I'd encourage you to connect with other people near you you can also reach out to us you can email us one thing that's good about this space is people really are open they've been very generous with us because that's the culture that we're building so it comes in many forms and it really is a pleasure to love each other so thank you so much and I'll pass it to matthew wow thank you all so much I'm gonna close this out so grateful when Jamie Gloon and I were thinking about how we wanted to uplift the those working around arts and culture and commenting and beyond your work of art co-op and and your constellation of people that you're collaborating with and uplifting came to the forefront so thank you thank you Clara thank you Oane, Caroline, Marina, Naty the whole art co-op team I also want to thank the ASL interpreters today Flo and Susan and Tori for being here this is a live event right now but this is also an archive so I'm so excited for this to live on those of you watching and feel free to share it, revisit it these are the embers that we need I think Clara finished in talking about that the darkness that this is we're working against let's say working within so I come out of the space feeling lighter and more purposeful and more focused I just want to say tomorrow we will be having part two of the long match it'll be a live event at Double Edge theater live streamed from two to four there are hosts of people there I won't go down the roster but it's a very exciting group please tune in please share all these materials and even if you can't come and be with us in person come back and be with us in the past and in the archival materials thank you Hall around I almost forgot to say thank you to Vijay Matthew and the Hall around team for making this space possible it's really meaningful and thank you all for joining us have a great rest of your day all right