cooperative foundations

A peer-led program for game devs and media artists who want to work cooperatively. Ten weeks and eight modules on governance, shared agreements, money, and conflict, worked through with a cohort doing the same thing.

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Applications open until Friday, October 16. It's open to individual creators in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.

We're also hiring Peer Supports to run the jam studios. Paid, applications open until October 9.

What is this?

Cooperative Foundations is an eight-module curriculum we've developed in collaboration with community members and alumni since 2021. It's peer-led, and gets participants deep into the stuff studios never have time to do before they're firing off their first CMF grant (and becoming legally and financially entangled with collaborators they don't actually know how to work with).

We invite game devs to slow down and build their cooperative muscles. Participants learn what style of decision-making works for the team, how to handle money fairly and transparently, how to arrive at shared values, what to do when it all goes sideways.

It runs in two formats. The Studio Residency is for teams that already exist, and we've run it for six cohorts. The new Studio Jam is for individuals with or without existing teams, who we group into ad hoc jam studios for the duration of the program.

The curriculum is the same in both. Each regional hub sets the dates and who can apply, and adds its own province's co-op law, tax credits, and funding.

Coming up

PrairiesStudio Jam
Open until October 16Read about it and apply
PrairiesPeer Support, paid
Open until October 9Read the call
OntarioStudio Residency
Early 2027Join the Ontario list
Atlantic
Coming soonJoin the Atlantic list
Pacific/North
Coming soonJoin the Pacific/North list

It’s free.

Accessibility supports are available to every participant.

The modules

Every intake opens with a kickoff, then eight modules in this order. Each builds on the last, and each comes with reading, a takeaway exercise, and a conversation to have with your studio before the next.

  1. Co-op principles and power

    Cooperation is a skill, not a trait, and most of us were never taught it. We start with co-op lineages (and whose knowledge gets credited), the seven ICA co-operative principles, and the values underneath them. You leave with your own values written down and your studio’s mapped against each other.

  2. Shared purpose and alignment

    Being friends, or sharing politics, doesn't mean you share work values, decision-making styles, or financial expectations. The Talk walks your studio through four rounds: financial reality, time and availability, skills and contributions, and how each of you makes decisions. Then you work out the scale and pace you actually want.

  3. Actionable values and impact

    Values in a Miro board don’t prevent burnout. Two tools put them to work. The Why/What/How framework turns a value into a daily practice, and Layers of Effect maps who a decision affects. You practise on real scenarios, like the person who wants to join unpaid “for the experience.”

  4. Decision-making in practice

    The first questions are who gets to raise an issue, who decides, and what happens to dissent. We cover consensus and consent, and the informal hierarchy check-in. Meeting roles rotate: facilitator, notetaker, timekeeper. You practise facilitating, because the loudest voice winning is also a decision-making process, just not a good one.

  5. Co-op structures and governance

    We go through the legal part first: sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, worker co-op, and what makes a co-op legally distinct (one member, one vote; member ownership; surplus follows labour). Then we take governance models by studio size: collective governance, the advice process, circles, DisCOs, and how you add or remove members. You don’t need to incorporate to practise governance.

  6. Equitable economics

    Money comes into a studio from member contributions, grants, revenue from work, investment, and tax credits. We look at why grant funding can hide your real operating costs. You compare compensation models side by side, practise financial transparency, and decide how surplus gets distributed or reserved. Money is where conflict usually shows up first.

  7. Conflict resolution and collective care

    Disagreement is data. We separate structural conflict from interpersonal conflict, look at the conflicts that come up in game studios specifically, and work with the Loving Justice framework, behaviourally specific feedback, and the Window of Transformation. Addressing conflict directly is an act of care. Avoidance lets harm fester.

  8. Self-evaluation and pathways

    You do a private self-assessment and your studio does a collective one. Then we go through what comes next: Ghost Guild, workshops, becoming a Peer Support, and incorporation if you’re ready for it. The practices you’ve built erode quietly once you stop doing them, so the last thing you do is plan for keeping them.

“Through the program we were able to slow down and examine our values and how we want them to shape what we do. We were quick to see that our values around care and anti-burn out culture weren’t always being met through habits ingrained in us over years spent in capitalist systems we wanted to leave behind.”

– Daya, Void Blob Worker Cooperative

“If one person was to stop being able to contribute to the studio, would no one else know enough about their responsibilities? Before the Baby Ghosts program, I don’t think we ever even really considered this topic. Since being in the program, we hold knowledge sharing sessions about once a week so we can teach each other new skills.”

– Kay-Lynne Fehr, Mistik Studios

“It’s meant so much to have the care and support of the entire community. It’s been so validating to get quick feedback from a community of very smart people.”

– Aric McBay, Polyvale Studios

“Focusing on ✨values✨ has been an eye-opener for me. When we started, it felt way too early to think about studio values, but now that we’ve had big conversations about it, I feel like I’m leaning on our values for most decisions and ways we talk about ourselves.”

– Kylie, Studio Wtchcrft

Is this for you right now?

Cooperative Foundations is for the work you do before you apply for funding or incorporate: governance, values, and how you actually work together.

We centre IBPoC, disabled, trans and non-binary creators, and people facing economic precarity.

Note: We focus on pre-formation foundations, not the legal process of incorporation. If you're already incorporated, you can still apply.

  • Are you willing to talk about money, power, and expectations with the people you work with, including when it's uncomfortable?
  • Can you protect time for the sessions and the work between them, on top of whatever else you're carrying?
  • Are you open to changing how you work, not just learning how other people do it?
  • Do you want to build something with other people, or are you looking for advice on a plan you've already committed to?

Sessions run in English. Tell us what you need in order to take part and we'll work with you.

What it asks of you

Each intake sets its own pace. Across all of them, expect a module to work through, some reading and writing on your own time, and conversations with your peers between modules.

Core themes

  • Cooperation as a skill you practise, not a trait you have
  • Identity, privilege, and the informal hierarchy that forms anyway
  • Anti-capitalist alternatives to growth-at-all-costs models
  • Deciding how to decide (consent, consensus, and who gets to raise an issue)
  • Financial transparency and equitable compensation
  • Unspoken assumptions brought up early, while the stakes are low
  • Conflict as care rather than failure
  • Patience for the pace of trust1

Peer Supports

Peer Supports are practising co-op founders trained in governance, IP and platform strategy, and trauma-informed facilitation. Many are based in the regions we work in.

Thank you to our Peer Supports: Brendan Campbell, Derek Kwan, Donna Knox, eileen mary holowka, eliot m b howard, Hedy Fu, Henry Faber, Hope Docking, june sea, kaitlyn dougon, Lindsay Rollins, Madeleine Patton, Madeline Zaytsoff, Madison Côté, Reese Valentine, Sloane Smith, Sophie Mongrain, Titus McNally, Valerie St Gelais, Yannan Ma; and our inaugural facilitators bryan depuy and datejie cheko green.

Applications open until October 16

The Prairie Winter Studio Jam is open to individual creators in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. If you're somewhere else, join your region's list.

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  1. Ruth Łchav’aya K’isen Miller, “An Alaska Native mutual aid network tackles the climate crisis,” High Country News, 2024. Read article →↩