We Create Spaces for Black Artists to Thrive.

As a Black arts cooperative we offer these supports with networks of creatives to a) reclaim their birthright as creatives who co-create cultural equity; b) cooperatively own, steward, and govern the means of their cultural production; and c) drive the economic vehicles and infrastructure necessary for arts & culture ecosystems in historically vulnerable communities to mutually thrive.

We collaborate through leadership development, skill sharing, and consulting with Black creatives as well as organizations, companies, art & literary collectives, cultural institutions, other programs, brands, and platforms that highlight and center Black art and culture. ZEAL has operational studio locations in the Los Angeles and New York Metropolitan areas, and have affiliate partnerships in Miami, Florida and Accra, Ghana.

What makes us different?

We are Black creatives who are values aligned and principled in building movements towards owning the means of our own cultural production through our creative capital. When Black creatives are grounded in the legacy of the Black aesthetic that facilitates their leadership development from a place of abundance and sufficiency their body of work stands as a purposeful, evolutionary, and committed act of liberation. The Black Aesthetic is visual and performance art, creative writing, music, dance, fashion, and theater that creates an expression of and impression on Black culture. We provide cooperative economic alternatives that support the surviving artist and creative to thrive through our partnerships, membership base, studio production, and freelance opportunities through our creative studio that focuses on cultural design and social impact.  

Desired Impact

• Creating economic sustainability through applied learning of business development, art merchandising and commerce beyond the gig economy

• Cultivating community care and healing practices in community with other creatives through resource mobilization and mutual aid support.

• A pipeline of Black visual and performance art that is promoted within and outside of cultural institutions

Creating cultural Equity & community wealth

We cannot begin to achieve our vision of creating spaces where Black creativity thrives among artists until we practice what it means to cooperate in an economic environment that liberates us from the legacy of slavery and colonialism. We get to shift our relationship to these legacies of racialized violence and trauma in how we create our livelihoods through the concept of work and the politics of labor. See our iterative framework below on how reparations can support us in our collective liberation and restoration communal power in historically disenfranchised and marginalized communities.

Ultimately, we have a responsibility as creatives to do the following action to be in:

Reconciliation of our relationships in the ecosystem of other Black creatives who believe in economic liberation of our neighborhoods and communities throughout the Black diaspora.  (shifting out of scarcity mindset, emotional emancipation from capitalism, wellness, and stop emotional enablers of capitalism and white fragility. )

Restoration of socioeconomic conditions. We cannot build the futures we want without remediating the foundation that this country was built on, and that is settler colonialism and slavery. Meaning we must shift the values of our circles of relationships and the way we relate to the politics of work and labor as creatives. (40 hour work weeks, exploitative working conditions, false expectations around professionalism based in white supremacy culture, etc.)

Reparations towards our collective economic actions of solidarity that repair harm and chart the next course forward towards developing a regenerative ecosystem for cooperative economics. (i.e shared infrastructure for investing capital in Black organizations & businesses that operate in a solidarity economy (art cooperatives w/ mutual benefits, land trusts, credit unions, community reinvestment funds, susu/giving/gifting circles, cooperative loan funds, worker self-directed non-profits, decentralized autonomous organizations, etc.) 

For more information about the folks involved with ZEAL please go to our contact tab.

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