<p>While American screenwriters were resisting AI capture, a vibrant community of digital creatives and arts organizations across Québec and Canada formed the alliance ArtIA. ArtIA advances commons-based alternatives to cultural AI, in response to the observation that while AI is rapidly transforming creative tools and workflows, the cultural sector lacks the critical resources, reference frameworks, support systems, and training needed to navigate this shift. The AI commons is conceptually contested, as corporate and governmental discourses increasingly frame AI as a “common good,” while probabilistic AI systems, common training datasets, and debates over AI as public infrastructure generate a muddled appropriation of the commons. ArtIA advances commoning as a situated practice grounding visions of the future in cultural needs, sectoral challenges, and traditions of commoning in Québec and Canada. This paper traces the 18-month stakeholder consultation organized by ArtIA, which enrolled 204 participants and&#xa0;collectively aimed to imagine and develop concrete interventions toward an AI commons situated at the intersection of Canadian AI governance as industrial policy and the localized practices of digital creation. Findings grounded in situational analysis and action research show the enrollment of four interrelated actor groups—cultural organizations, digital creatives, commons networks, and researchers. These actors formed new alliances and produced three concrete imaginaries for a creative AI commons: (1) Artisanal AI, (2) Common Compute, and (3) Critical AI Literacies. In closing, we argue that technologies developed and governed at the right scale—accessible, situated, and collectively stewarded—can operate as material levers for social solidarity, collective agency and shared responsibility that ideological politics and industrial policies cannot.</p>