Sixty Collective is a community project built to advocate for and showcase the creators, contributors, and collaborators of Sixty Inches From Center.
After four years of dreaming and developing, Sixty Inches From Center is launching Sixty Collective, a network of Midwest artists and arts workers as well as a platform for hiring, supporting, and fueling their creative lives and livelihoods.
Built by and for our communities, Sixty Collective was created to show love to the people who keep Sixty Inches From Center running, to deepen our advocacy for creative labor, and to facilitate healthy working conditions and opportunities within all aspects of our creative communities. Using a solidarity economy lens, Sixty Collective is how we create models for what is possible when artists work together to address the chronic issues that keep us from pursuing our creative careers in healthier, fuller, and more expansive ways.
What does this actually look like? Sixty Collective will give Collective Members access to a new and experimental benefits program designed for and catering to the unique needs of Sixty’s team and network of freelance writers, editors, artists, curators, librarians, archivists, and arts workers in Chicago and across the Midwest–especially those within Indigenous, diasporic, queer, trans, and disability communities. In addition to having their work featured on the website, Collective Members will have exclusive access to a thoughtful and co-created suite of free resources, learnings, advisors, peer networks, funds, programs, and tools that are tapped into as-needed. Sixty will be working to seek and secure financial and material resources to redistribute to our Members while also working to attract and direct gigs, jobs, and opportunities their way.
Together, the arts worker database, knowledge share, and benefits exponentially expands how we at Sixty can more directly and tangibly advocate for and support our growing network of creative freelancers beyond unsustainable pay structures and nonexistent safety nets. Calls for new members will open throughout the year.
This project is made possible through support from Arts Work Fund, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Walder Foundation, and inspiration from our network of regional partners and collaborators.
Sixty Collective’s website provides a for-hire directory showcasing the talents of individual members and an open resource library for our community.
The Knowledge Share is a carefully curated selection of resources including tools, services, grants, residencies, self-directed learning, and much more.