- A mutually defined space where collaborators ideas are allowed to flow, gestate, come to fruition
- I want to change how I think about my practice, I want it to develop, I want to discover possibilities I haven’t/ wouldn’t consider
- Within that space, an interest in allowing my ideas to breathe, my needs and my goals to be satisfied – creative growth borne out of genuine human connection
- A strong interest in exploring the same idea-space, though from different/ alternate/ contrary directions
- Collaboration should begin from a shared question. It should be something I cannot answer alone
- Find an invitation to explore – offer a concrete provocation
- Outcome definition at the beginning is forbidden! The processes (individual and convergent) should offer output – which may or may not be answers of a form. Maybe it’s not about answering the shared question, maybe the process is the only answer that is required!
- Set deliberate constraints that force collaborators outside of their defaults
- It is important for me that any collaborators have different lived experiences to me
- I want my perspectives, processes and philosophies challenged, corrected, disputed – understanding and leveraging tensions will offer creative value
- I want to be called out when I am wrong, bigoted, unconsciously absorbed in my privilege, unable to see another’s viewpoint
- I want help to unpack my “invisible knapsack” of white privilege (McIntosh, 1989)
- I want to be exposed to collaborators that push my material and process boundaries – I want collaborators that are ‘better than me’
- I want to be made to feel vulnerable on a regular basis
- I want to feel trusted and valued, and I want to correspond in kind
- I want to work with collaborators that allow my fear and resistance to the process of collaboration, then resist that, help me overcome it
- I want collaborators that frustrate me, then show me a way forward
- I don’t want to have ideas forced upon me; there should be space for discourse and debate
- Clear, timely communication
- Organisation systems and patterns that have been mutually agreed
- Acceptable channels for communications
- A significant proportion of in-person contact and working together
- A shared work ethic
- Skilled, patient and active listener and questioner
- Intellectually driven, curious, information-seeker. Collaborators that want to get under the skin of a concept, to explore different ways of viewing a problem
- Experimenter, timely, flexible, adaptable, understanding, skilled
- I want to collect stories of others experiences of life. I see my process – to date – as being autoethnographic. I want to broaden this and begin collecting the experiences of others, how they cross over with mine, where they diverge. I want to present these stories as valid knowledge through some form of creative output
- I have an interest in working with writers, poets, those who write spatially and sensorially. The materiality of language. Words that can exist beyond the page, become something else.
References
McIntosh, P. (1989) White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack At: https://www.nationalseedproject.org/key-seed-texts/white-privilege-unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack (Accessed 06/04/26)