In 2019 former colleagues and friends of Rashid approached them to discuss the future of creativity and collaboration. At that time, Society of Owners (the experiment in shared ownership that was a precursor to Transekt) was in full swing. Bringing together around 30 early career creatives in Berlin we set out on a journey together to envision an organization that provided the potential for higher levels of self-determination and lower levels of dependency upon wage-labor configurations of employment. The hope was that sparking interest in sharing the ownership of an organization that we might be able to develop a sort of labor-union to advocate for better conditions in the freelance market which feeds on young international talent in Berlin like a vampire under the shadow of night.

While that project was not successful in spawning an organization, it did have an impactful outcome. Walking away with the insight that it is not particularly easy (maybe not even possible) to GIVE ownership and cooperative culture to others it forced a step back. A step back and towards developing more understanding and insights into means of departing this arguably novel culture unto modern workers who have been raised with narratives of success that limit their imaginaries of what are feasible possibilities for them to pursue. Since 2019, Owoyele has spent the last 5+ years doing academic and professional research on the topics of cooperatives, Genossenschaften, platform coops, platform design and facilitation, as well as broader social and solidarity economy thematics.

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