The Elements of Mutual Aid
About This project
The Elements of Mutual Aid is an independently produced documentary series profiling over a dozen mutual aid-based projects across North America.
This series gathers the voices of community organizers who are tending grassroots alternatives to systems of oppression. In intimate interviews, we discuss the nuanced work of building trust between neighbors, making decisions horizontally, protecting our communities, sharing the responsibility of communal infrastructure, and more.
Our series premiered on YouTube and Kolektiva in May, 2026. The co-directors are currently on a 6-month screening tour across communities in North America to continue learning how to use this series as a tool for popular education and discussion.
Why we made this series
Mutual aid invites us to believe in our potential to care for one another rather than needing to control one another. This reorientation has deep impacts on what we expect from each other and the world we dare to build.
This series aims to:
- deepen conversations around what mutual aid means in organizing work;
- provide insight into how mutual aid-based projects are structured and function;
- inspire more communities to begin and mature mutual aid-based projects; and
- encourage more grassroots visual media that documents what communities are learning.
Countering power systems leading us toward collapse, The Elements of Mutual Aid shows that another world is not only necessary and possible, but already exists and is growing.
In Association Partners
The Elements of Mutual Aid is proud to be supported by the following businesses and collectives:
If your business/collective shares similar values with this project and wants to join this list of partners, please reach to us out at [email protected].
You can learn more about what an In Association production credit with this project means here.