I often participate in working groups or task teams of arts and cultural organizations — collections of managers gathering to address a collective problem, or consider a collaborative solution. And I’m often frustrated that more than half of the conversation is inevitably spent framing the problem in narrow terms, with the rest of the time conceiving a solution to that narrow frame. The problem, it strikes me, is generally bigger than the tactical issues being discussed. And any solution must begin with a broad view and a new frame.
Said Albert Einstein: ”You cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must learn to see the world anew.”
But, my recent working group experience, with Project Audience this week in Chicago, is slowly teaching me to get over myself.
The gathering, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, convened to consider the development of new software tools to build connection and community around the arts. Representatives from many city or regional on-line arts portals, arts listings, audience initiatives, and the like are becoming frustrated with the tools they are using, and losing faith that commercial vendors will fill the gaps in mission-focused ways. So, they’re wondering if they should build their own.
As I was beginning to feel my familiar frustration, however, we heard from Chris Mackie, a Mellon Foundation specialist on community-source software development (primarily outside the arts). And his point was this: Collaboration is a muscle.
In his extensive experience with communities of practice building software together, he said, that muscle took time to build bulk and dexterity. Early efforts were invariably designed to solve immediate problems, often narrowly defined. But the process of resolving those problems together made the group smarter, more sophisticated, and more prepared to grow into the challenge of a larger frame.
Along the way, early wins and direct returns on investment led to more elegant and innovative solutions. And those innovations led the group to think and work differently. And on and on. In some cases, it would take years of collective work until the group would find its way into the problem it was originally trying to solve. But they wouldn’t and couldn’t have recognized the problem or its solution back then. They needed collaborative muscle, which could only have been built together.
Which is why I’m rethinking my own frustrations with the pace and frame of problem-solving among cultural managers. And why I’m now considering ways, instead, to help them build things together. I’m certainly not giving up on the long view or the big frame. But I’m realizing that even the best perspective will require some considerable collaborative heft to get us there.
Andrew; thanks for the kind words. This is a great post, and I’m delighted that I could add some value at Project Audience. I would ask one small correction, not to the content, but to the attribution. The phrase “collaboration is a muscle” is attributable to our grantees, not directly to me. The true “extensive experience” with this kind of work is theirs. I’m an admiring observer and supporter of their efforts, but they do the heavy lifting.
One common reason for the pattern you describe is that collaborations are often too disjoint to reap full benefits. No sooner do organizations and people start to develop some muscle than the project’s over and they’re back sitting on the couch for a while until another comes along–by which time, the muscles have atrophied again. There’s a lot to be said for finding reasons to collaborate that don’t go away after 3, 6, or 12 months. I hope Project Audience will prove to be an example of just that sort of long-term, sustainable opportunity. -Chris
Andrew and Chris – I love this idea, really love it and now it has me thinking about what kind of ‘work out’ my collaboration muscles need in the coming days. I also think this is a lovely way of moving away from the idea that to collaborate means giving stuff away i.e. a one way transaction. I rather like the idea of definition and tone being a ‘payoff’ from exercising those muscles…
Chris, Andrew:
The description of collaboration as muscle is right on the psychological money!
The continuous building of trust and knowledge through a process (to paraphrase your words, Andrew) of: participation, frustration, conception,experience, progressive expansion from the focal to the general, problem resolution, more frustration, and rethinking, is the cornerstone of community strength.
And in terms of what we take away as lifelong learning, the sweat and tears of the workout teaches that community and relationship require continual practice. Ian
HI I work in the filmmaking/media arts arena which intersects/crosses with Visual Arts (the category we apply for any funding) We (PIFVA) recently co-collaborated on a conference -DIY Days Philly, bringing together media artists, web designers, software designers, musicians and visual artists. A project of great collaboration that was totally at no cost to participants. I recommend you look at some of the ideas on the Workbookproject.org site and IndieGoGo etc. to see how the entrepreneurial spirit is driving new solutions to DIY in media arts. Which is now shifting to DIWO – DO IT With Others. Just another aspect of this thread.
What’s interesting to me, as an academic in theatre, is how little we explicitly show our students how to develop that muscle. We just sort of assume they’ll learn these skills through observation — except what they observe has very little to do with collaboration any more than a Detroit production line has anything to do with collaboration. I think we need some way to explicitly teach and practice these skills, don’t you?
P.S. I was sorry you weren’t able to participate in the WESTAF NEA conversation.
Great Andrew to re-think our response to those “frustrations with the pace and frame of problem-solving among cultural managers”. Any collaboration has a learning curve, as we found with audience development agencies across the UK, so start as soon as possible, and go through the classic stages of the ‘storming, forming, norming, performing’ model. People, individuals, often stop things because they think they are not working, when they may just be starting and they may need to work harder at being open, sharing, collective, collaborative.
I echo Annette’s call to move away from “giving stuff away.” The most effective collaboration is more pluralistic in that disparate groups come together and are the better for it.
This so resonates with me and my work with colleagues, an upper midwest network of artists, educators, arts organizations and state agencies, in MN & ND. I appreciate the metaphor and will forward this to the group as we prepare to meet again this winter. Skype and video conferencing is helpful but love the idea of accessing other technology to enhance our face to face and long distance collaborations. Pacing, timing and patience are key, but slowing down the process to examine something closely AND get as many perspectives surfaced as possible is key.