Art.coop & the New Economy Coalition

Natalia “Nati” Linares is a cultural organizer and communications strategist who works to expand the horizons for economic fairness and stability to the creative community. Through her work as artist and communications organizer and cofounder of Art.coop, an organization that addresses inequality among artists and culture workers, she helps creatives and culture workers change conversations about the role that art plays in changing our social and economic systems.

Natalia spent more than a decade working in the music industry before joining the New Economy Coalition, a network of over 150 groups focused on building the solidarity economy movement in the U.S. and internationally. In 2021, she co-authored the report Solidarity Not Charity: Arts & Culture Grantmaking in the Solidarity Economy, which traced the long history of artists organizing for economic justice and pushed funders to invest in solutions to the root causes of systemic failures that leave artists vulnerable. Art.coop supports artistic communities to provide for themselves and increase collective ownership of housing and creative businesses, as well as build solidarity in the field by speaking more openly about the harsh realities of making a living in their industries while tapping into legacies of artist resistance.

In Culture of Possibility #41, Arlene Goldbard and François Matarasso interview Nati Linares, whose focus is the solidarity economy for artists, with its resist/fight and build model: calling attention to what’s wrong, experimenting with alternatives. We talk about Nati’s grounding in the music business, leading to an understanding of capitalism and how it works or doesn’t for artists, and the research she and her colleagues have done on alternative models for financing artists’ work.