Last month, on 8th June, the first RewireLondon event took place, at Rich Mix in Shoreditch – a collaboration between Bracket and 8Fold. RewireLondon was an unconference for the creative sector, an interactive and flexible event where the attendees were the driving force. This meant that rather than curating the schedule completely with invited speakers, it was mostly left open for artists, writers, designers and other creatives to suggest and run their own sessions.
Making Ideas Happen is the new book from Scott Belsky – the founder of Behance, an online platform and community for visual creators, and the 99% conference an annual event that brings together creative thinkers to discuss their effectiveness and productivity. Scott is passionate about helping creative people realise their ideas and has been researching the area since his MBA.
Just one more day until BracketLab takes place and the team is now all now confirmed. Now, this is nothing new, but the way the team has formed shows the power of networks.
Here is who is involved (in order of how far the network spread):
Emily Wilkinson (Empathi) – graphic facilitator/illustrator (introduced through a mutual friend)
Naomi Ray (Studio Pixie) – graphic designer/illustrator (met through Twitter)
Matthew Smith-Stubbs – front-end web developer (fellow member of THECUBE, co-working space for creative businesses)
Andrew Davey (MediaBandit) – web developer (responded to a call put out through the Open Coffee mailing list)
Joel Somerfield (Order) – filmmaker (was passed on by someone through the Open Coffee mailing list. But turns out he has done work for mutual contacts also).
So we all know how important it is to stay networked to stay in the loop, but if you want to build a collaborative team quickly – it’s essential.
Stay tuned for the progress of BracketLab, which will be taking place on 2nd and 3rd June at THECUBE.
Bracket’s lunchtime workshop at THE CUBE was a great success, with lots of interesting discussion about effective creative collaboration using online tools. Questions were raised around approaching intellectual property and attribution, managing egos and how to encourage people to use online tools (when all they want to use is e-mail!).
Creative Boom London kindly wrote a fantastic review of the workshop which covers all of these points (and more) in detail.
Bracket’s session at Media Camp London 4 during Social Media Week generated lots of discussion about the best methods and tools for helping groups of creatives to get things done. It looked at how social media could be used to support collaborative working between artists and designers etc that are used to working independently, usually have autonomy over their work, are characteristically busy, and highly skilled in generating ideas. The aim of the session was to develop solutions for how to channel that creativity into tangible outcomes and how social media can be used to support the process along the way.
So, we’re getting a new brand identity for London and the Mayor has invited top companies to pitch for the £600,000 project. The whole thing has caused a bit of a stir, particularly, due to one agency’s approach to the brief.
Moving Brands, for the past week or so, have been asking Londoners what they think. Through a dedicated blog and Twitter profile (@we_are_london), MB have been open and transparent about their development process, and are gathering ideas and responses from the public.
We recently bought this print by Ornamental Conifer at the “Power in Numbers” Cure Studio/Print Club show. The simplicity of the phrase struck a chord with Bracket:
"If we all got together it might just work" by Ornamental Conifer
As a talented creative practitioner, your individual work and maintaining a strong identity will always be important.Your own creative talents are why people would want to work with you in the first place!So if you are keen on collaborating, this means considering new ways of working. In addition to developing your own work, you might engage in pop-up projects and even create new ventures with others.
One challenge will be in always ensuring that these collaborative projects also align with your own creative work and values – this will be essential in enhancing and leveraging your individual practice, not detracting from it or diluting it.
I’ve just been reading Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth – which outlines the way his design studio approaches projects. There are 43 items, and it’s all well worth a read, but the points that stood out for Bracket were:
#3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.
#16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
#32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
My interpretation of these points is that:
- We can learn a lot from the process of engaging in collaborative working. If we know how to do it effectively, we can allow it to take us to new places.
- An end product is an achievement, but it’s definitive – once it’s done, it’s done. The knowledge gained from working with others and from our own experience of being involved can be taken with us long into the next project and beyond.
- Collaboration can allow someone to grow and develop – both in terms of creative potential and in longer term individual capacity.
