Research Task 1: Typology of Collaboration

Table of Contents

Insights for Application to Own Practice

Complementarity vs Interdependence
The idea of working from the outside-to-inside first as opposed to working from the inside-to-outside first
I would suggest that it is the presence of ‘difference’ that is one of the factors that leads to positive collaboration
Opposites leads to contrast. Broad vs intimate
‘Challenges’ drive development. Being exposed to alternate perspectives, practices, knowledge etc can lead to healthy challenges: challenges are intrinsic in health collaboration
creative output can be regarded as a “Rhetorical Strategy and its effects” – techniques used to persuade, engage or influence an audience and the impact those have on the viewer, reader, listener etc
Juxtaposition and joint exploration of ideas are crucial for constructing new paradigms
Discourse is a form of collaboration
Multidisciplinarity challenges the creatives comfort zone
Partnerships provide new visual possibilities through alternate eyes, visual and verbal dialogues

Transforms the field and its participants
Collaboration partners frequently suspend their differences in style
Can experience a profound sense of bonding
Most intensive and intertwined mode
Partners develop a shared vision and joint creative identity over time
Thinking and working become so deeply fused that it’s difficult to attribute idea to one individual or another
True synthesis of perspectives
Most transformative mode
Capable of producing work neither partner created alone

Differences in skill, training and temperament support a joint outcome through division of labour
Specialised disciplinary knowledge and contrasting modes of thinking play roles
Partners bring distinct and different skills, temperaments or knowledge bases to a defined shared project
Each person contributes what the other lacks
“Cognitive complementarity”
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts because partners are not alike

Loosest and most informal
People share a common interest, discipline or community of practice
They exchange ideas, provide feedback, offer emotional support
Don’t work in a sustained tightly co-ordinated way
Collaboration is real, but diffuse, without a defined joint project
E.g. a community of artists who influence on another through correspondence, shared exhibitions or informal conversations

Deep long term relationships
Collaborators share projects, a way of life, a set of values, an intellectual/ creative world view[
Personal and professional boundaries blur
Intimacy and shared existence become the substrate of creative work
The relationship becomes generative
Possibility of friction causing toxicity

Collaboration is often motivated by the desire to transform existing knowledge and paradigms into new visions
Collaboration should not always be considered as people working in close proximity: The division of labour does not require that all people are under the same roof – or even being alive at the same time
Collaboration relies on a person ‘performing’ a contributory activity at the appropriate time
Creative work is situated and supported in a complex network that constitutes the “fields of creativity”

Creatives want to unite their limited ‘I’ with a communal existence, whilst retaining a strong, grounded sense of themselves
Transformation of thinking styles and the development of a novel understanding of the physical and humanly crafted world are best achieved when supported by an engaged thought community
In spatially and close collaboration, artists heighten their own understanding of their purpose. They evaluate the execution of their purpose by examining the work of their partners and peers

Collaboration is more than task sharing: it’s fundamentally a relational and cognitive process
Creativity is inherently dialogic (based on dialogue, conversation, and the shared construction of meaning), not solitary
In practice, collaboration is a spectrum: real partnerships move between or blend modes over time
Tension between individual vision and group input is practical, organisational and rooted in the deepest structures of human psychology
- How we form identity
- How we protect ourselves from threat
- How we balance our need for self expression with our need for connection
Most effective creative collaborators tend to have developed a kind of psychological flexibility – able to hold their vision strongly enough to give it direction, whilst remaining genuinely open to input without feeling existentially threatened by it