The Manifesto
Who we are
Omega Artists is an independent collective of artists working with AI tools, owned by the people who make the work and by no one else.
We take our name from two moments when artists decided to stop waiting for permission. In 1919, Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks and Griffith founded United Artists so the people who made the films would own them, rather than serve the studios. Six years earlier, in 1913, the critic Roger Fry gathered Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and others into the Omega Workshops, a laboratory of design ideas that brought the language of avant-garde art into everyday life. Both believed what we believe: the makers should hold the work.
In 1919, a handful of artists built United Artists so they could own what they made. They were told the lunatics had taken over the asylum. A century on, we are the lunatics, and we have no intention of giving the asylum back.
We are not a company. We are not a brand. We are a group of artists who decided to stop working alone.
What we believe
The artists own it.
Omega Artists belongs to its members. No vendor owns us, no advertiser funds us, no single person runs us. Decisions are made by the people doing the work.
We keep our own names and our own work.
Every member keeps their own channel, their own audience and every penny they earn from it. Nothing here takes a cut of what you make. You came in as an artist with a name, and you leave with it.
We are tool-agnostic.
The tools change every month, and we change with them. One piece is built in one pipeline, the next in another. We owe no loyalty to any platform, and what we care about is the work, not the brand on the software.
We layer our craft to get past the slop.
Anyone can generate a clip. We are here to do the harder thing: to layer tools, skills and judgement until the work reaches the standard of real cinema. That is the whole point of doing it together.
No new gates.
The old world was built on gatekeepers, the studios, commissioners and agents who decided whose work deserved to exist. The tools are in everyone's hands now, and the gate has fallen. We are not here to build a new one. We keep the door open, including against ourselves, in the moments we are tempted to close it. We are welcoming by vow, not by mood.
We are not for sale.
We endorse no tool, no platform, no company, ever. We take no money, no free access and no favour in exchange for our name or our members' names. We will gladly say what we used when it helps another artist learn, but we will never tell anyone what to use, and we will never be paid to. The ban is on being bought, not on being open.
Artists lifting artists lifting artists.
This is the promise that matters most, because it is the one thing a solo creator can never give themselves. Nothing goes out under the Omega mark until someone who did not make it has watched it through and said so. A second pair of eyes is the price of membership and the gift of it.
And because that only works if it is safe, we give notes in service of the work, never the ego. We make the thing better; we do not prove ourselves clever. No berating, no scoring points, no infighting. Say the hard thing kindly, and hear it generously.
The mark
The Ω is a seal, not a signature.
At the Omega Workshops, no artist signed their work; everything bore only the Greek letter Ω. We do the opposite and the same. Your name stays on your work, always and without exception. But the Ω goes on it only once the work has been watched and approved. Their mark meant made by the Workshops. Ours means watched, questioned and approved by artists we trust.
The seal carries no claim.
The Ω is an endorsement, never an ownership. Wearing it gives the collective no stake in your work, no cut of your revenue, and no say over how or where you release it. It is a badge you choose to earn, not a hold anyone takes over what you made. A member may always release without the mark; the work is theirs either way.
The founders are its guardians, for now.
A seal is only worth something if the eye behind it can be trusted, so the founding members grant it and keep its standard. As the collective grows, members whose judgement has earned that trust will be invited into the circle that grants it. This is a door that opens over time, not a wall. Hosting the community and keeping the collective running are vital work and belong to whoever does them well; granting the seal is a separate charge, held by those who guard the mark.
How we work
We work in crews.
No one has to be a whole studio alone. Members form small crews of two to four, each bringing a specialty. For a film, that might be one on image, one on sound, one on edit, one on story; a music or art project forms its crew the same way, by its own specialties. The benefit of a project is shared among the crew that made it, with a one-page agreement before the work starts so everyone knows where they stand.
We keep the hand in the work.
The Omega artists moved from a loose working drawing to a finished object, and deliberately kept the freedom of the drawing alive in the final piece. We work the same way. Polish is not the goal; life is. We would rather keep something rough and alive than sand it into something dead.
We meet as artists.
We gather every fortnight for a session we call Thursdays, after the evenings the Bloomsbury Group held, to show work, argue, and think aloud together. We are spread across the world and no single hour suits everyone, so the meeting moves and repeats to share the burden of the clock fairly. The point is not business. The point is each other.
What we make
Our own work, freely.
Members make whatever they make, under their own names, and the collective helps them make it better.
Collective films, together.
We also make work as a collective, in the United Artists spirit, built by crews drawn from the membership. We begin where the law leaves us free: works in the public domain. From there we build a pipeline to acquire adaptation rights to books and other source material, pooled and funded together, so that one day we can tell stories still under copyright without any of us carrying the cost alone.
Work we believe in, raised together.
When a member carries a project too large to shoulder alone, one they are truly passionate about, the collective can pool its weight behind it, raising funding together to make on a scale none of us could reach apart.
Fan work, with a clear conscience.
Some of us make fan films, and they are made for love, never money. No work that borrows another's world carries a broadcaster's marks, and no money is ever attached to a fan title. We honour the thing we love by never pretending it is ours to sell.
How you join and how you leave
Membership is by invitation of the existing members, and it is extended generously. We are not here to gatekeep. We are here to find the people who want to get better and to get better alongside them.
Any member may leave at any time and take their own work with them, because it was always theirs. A member may be removed only by the agreement of the others, and only for breaking the promises in this document, above all the promise that no work goes out unseen by another artist, and that nothing borrowed is ever sold.
The line that holds it together
We make our own work, under our own names, and none of us makes it alone.
These principles are meant to hold. They may be changed only by the agreement of the whole membership, never by a few, and never in haste.