Collaboration: do we have to get along?

Convener(s): Pete Phillips 

Participants: James Stenhouse, Jodie Hawkes, Matthew Austin, James, Alex Eisenberg, Matt Trueman, Richard Smith, Jo Cawley, Gemma Paintin and others…

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

• Is Hierarchy useful?
• Making work takes ages and is frustrating when we make work collaboratively/democratically.
• Individuals grow up/apart and find it harder to meet on a single vision. Perhaps the process is too collaborative; there is a lack of conflict.
• Is it harder to make work with friends?
• Good things of working with people you know well are; short hand, understanding but maybe you could get too cosy?
• What about a disruptive, aggressive model with rules of engagement. Chip away at each others ideas, forward motion through challenging each other.
• Challenge as a methodology for collaborative practice.
• Long processes can accommodate more elaborate journeys to get to the end point. (some later discussion about “end points” and how useful they are…)
• What does the number of people have to do with it?
• Practicing to find the right balance in a group – the dynamic is discovered not prescribed.
• Deadlines can sometimes be helpful; it can be good to drive towards something. (Less so in the early stages of idea development.)
• Finding the right collaborators and finding a common ground – positive or negative.
• Being prepared to fail, in the process of developing a collaborative relationship.
• Bringing in outside influences/specialism can be a difficult process or negotiation.
• Is it helpful to have someone to manage the relationship between collaborators? Does that dilute it?
• Ego
• The key is trusting even if you don’t get along
• We don’t have to agree on anything as long as we are open about our disagreement.
• Important to have conflict out in the open.
• Do we have a need for a consensus that isn’t helpful? Do we need to leave it open? Not to worry about agreeing.
• The role of dramaturg or designer or manager as an overview or a mediator.
• Ear wigging or silent outside eye changes the way you work. Can you have a collaborator who just listens without your knowledge? Secret feedback from a spy! If you aren’t conscious of the outsider.
• Fear of other people, of having an outside presence, a watching presence in the process.
• Can you collaborate with a director?
• A director can be a collaborator. Bringing in someone under the banner of a role ‘director’ or ‘designer’ who has responsibility is that hard for an artist to give up that portion of responsibility?
• Perhaps they don’t have a role – just bring in a person.
• An outside eye?
• An inside eye?
• Weather reports – what does it feel like for you out there?
• With outside eyes it’s difficult to negotiate responsibility.
• What’s the difference between an outside eye and an inside eye?
• An outside eye can still be an integral part of the process. An outside eye comes in without baggage and is untainted by the previous journey. But needs to have an understanding of the process. It has to be the right person.
• How you want to work is a vision in itself? A vision can be process driven rather than product driven.
• A director can have a vision for a process and collaborate on that vision with the other artists involved.
• Trust…. Be intelligent.
• Some people see personal and work as two separate things and some people see it as the same thing. Is this a difference between devised and scripted work?
• Deep Democracy – understanding how groups work.
• Sensitivity, easier to be open with people you get along with
• It might be that what is right for you is conflict.
• Personal differences can block creative process but creative process can alleviate personal differences.