Caroline Woolard

Caroline Woolard is an artist and organizer based in Brooklyn, New York who works between the solidarity economy and conceptual art. Making media, sculptures, furniture, and events, Woolard co-creates spaces for critical exchange, forgotten histories, and desire inducing narratives. Her practice is research-based and collaborative. Sensing that each project transforms the people who make it, Woolard opens spaces for co-production rather than toiling alone. In 2009, Woolard cofounded three organizations to support collaborative cultural production; three long-term infrastructure projects that support short-term artworks: a studio space, OurGoods.org, and Trade School.coop. Working with conceptual artists, educators in the solidarity economy movement, and technologists in start-ups, Caroline Woolard labors for political economies of cooperation.

From TradeSchool.coop to NYC Real Estate Investment Cooperative 
Can cooperative platforms survive without patient capital and cooperative investment? Can transformative organizing for social change be facilitated online? After co-founding and co-facilitating sharing platforms OurGoods (http://ourgoods.org) and TradeSchool (http://tradeschool.coop/story) from 2008-2013, Caroline Woolard is proud to be a stewarding member of the early-phase NYC Real Estate Investment Cooperative (http://nycreic.com). Following a 15 minute presentation about 8 years of work with cooperative platforms, Woolard will create space for an open conversation about the limits and possibilities of (1) online platforms for transformative organizing and (2) philanthropic, state-subsidized, and cooperative investment mechanisms for cooperative platforms.