Considerations
- My primary collaborator will be my home town, Hastings. Do I credit this as a place, an entity or a collective? If I recognise Hastings a co-author in a phenomenological sense (contributing through place, atmosphere, community memory, material conditions) I will need a consistent framework for how that contribution is recognised.
- Contributions will differ – they won’t all be equal or equivalent. I will need to distinguish between my authorial framing and my artistic decisions;
- The town’s contribution – environment, history, encounter, material
- Human collaborator’s input – which may be creative, embodied, documentary or performative
- Those human collaborators that do come onboard, should understand and consent to how they contribution will be credited, how the work may be used, that they can withdraw participation or consent, and if there are any commercial implications. Especially important in a phenomenological / participatory led practice where the line between subject and author could blur.
- Copyright cannot be held by a place – copyright is person-centred so IP will be remain with me and human collaborators. I will need to clarify from the outset who holds rights in any resulting works and under what terms
- Human collaborators retain moral rights to their contributions under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, specifically right of attribution, right to object to derogatory treatment. I will need to acknowledge this and build in relevant processes for review, consent and refusal.
- If any of the work is sold, exhibited commercially, used in publications, I need to materially recognise all collaborators, both human and conceptual. This doesn’t necessarily mean financial payment, it could be crediting.
- As I see this project evolving over time, I will need a way to record which version(s) of a work involved which collaborators and at what stage.
- Will any form of community consultation, ethics statement or accountability structure be appropriate – especially if the project does engage with sensitive histories or marginalised groups.
Documentation
Project Documentation can be found in the ‘Collaboration Documents’ section of this learning log
References
Uk Copyright Service (2026) Fact sheet P-01: UK copyright law At: https://copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law (Accessed 14/06/24)
Legislation.gov.uk (2026) Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 At: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/contents (Accessed 14/06/26)