Artists Need Better. We’re Building It - Together.

Written By Alexandra Meda

The team at NET believes in a future where healthcare doesn't bankrupt you. Where retiring with dignity is actually a thing for ALL people. Where your material needs being met isn't a fantasy.

We're working toward that future. And we're not alone.

A 2025 national survey of 2,000 creative workers found that while 79% may have health insurance, nearly half purchased it on their own. Not through an employer. Not through a union. Alone. Only 40% have retirement access. Only 9% access any benefits through a union at all.

Individual artists cannot negotiate this. Individual organizations cannot either.

But collective broad-based values driven power can.

RAD'S BEEN ON THE ROAD

Rad Pereira is stewarding NET's Federation work, and lately they've been building relationships across movements. This fall: the Cooperative Conference in Cincinnati, sitting with worker-owners and mutual aid builders who've been practicing collective power for generations. Meeting with the Steelworkers Union to explore what becomes possible when artists and labor movements recognize each other as kin.

The folks who've been fighting for worker dignity for over a century have things to teach us. And we have something to offer them too.

LEARNING IN PUBLIC

We've also been in deep conversation with Tribeworks, a pilot cooperative that partnered with Creatives Rebuild New York to employ 165 artists at $65,000 salaries with real benefits. New research from Urban Institute and Rockefeller Institute tells us what actually happened:

Artists reported more stability, more well-being, more capacity to actually make work. 76% gained networking connections they didn't have before. Smaller organizations without employment infrastructure could finally participate. Cultural revitalization took root. On the Seneca Nation, ten AEP artists formed Good Medicine Creatives together.

And.

The benefits cliff hit hard.

13% lost Medicaid eligibility when their income increased. For disabled and chronically ill artists, employer-sponsored plans often don't cover what they actually need: powerchairs, costly medications. One artist shared: "A lot of treatments and prescriptions weren't covered. They apologized, washed their hands, didn't really help. It was a really disappointing experience."

The CRNY report names it directly: "Work doesn't work for everyone. And when work works, its success is often predicated on structural inequities."

When funding ended, many artists settled back into freelance precarity or left the field entirely. Rockefeller's conclusion: the program "emphasized the need for more permanent solutions."

We're not trying to copy what others have done. We're learning what worked, what didn't, and dreaming into what becomes possible when ensemble practitioners bring our methodologies to our material survival.

Because ensemble artists already know how to make decisions together. Share resources. Build trust across difference. We practice these things daily. What if we practiced it on the infrastructure that holds our lives?

THE SHAPE OF WHAT WE'RE BUILDING

NET is becoming something different. A solidarity network. Building a federation.

We're reaching across and beyond performing arts: ensemble artists, dancers, movement workers, freelancers, collectives, cultural workers of all kinds. Anyone practicing the art of working together toward shared purpose.

The practices that teach us to hold complexity, share resources, make decisions through consensus, move through conflict toward deeper relationship, those are exactly what we need to negotiate affordable healthcare, build financial smoothing, create pathways to retirement with dignity.

This is just transition for cultural workers. Moving from extraction toward regeneration. As Movement Generation teaches: transition is inevitable. Justice is not.

2025 is the UN International Year of Cooperatives. Only the second time in history the UN has made this designation. The theme: "Cooperatives Build a Better World." We're paying attention. We're building alongside. And we’re carrying our community forward.

WE'RE IN GOOD COMPANY

CAATA just launched a national healthcare program for their members: artists, administrators, cultural workers, and freelancers can now access health insurance through national PPO networks, dental with no waiting periods, vision, and supplemental coverage with guaranteed issue. No open enrollment restrictions. Group rates for individuals. They built this with guidance from New Jersey Theatre Alliance, who piloted their own version first. Organizations learning from organizations. Exactly how it should work.

Let’s pilot artists owning the infrastructure that supports us, together. Across the solidarity economy, worker co-ops, credit unions, mutual aid networks, and portable benefit experiments are growing.

When one node thrives, the whole network strengthens.

In the practice of us,

Alex

Alexandra Meda
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