So, the day of our performance arrived and, despite my on-going worries it would never come together, it did, brilliantly, and we were all left with an immense feeling of pride and satisfaction at what we had produced.
The last few details being tied up so effectively meant we were all going into the performance feeling well prepared and excited (and only a little smug).
But of course, everything didn’t run entirely smoothly. As with everything, the unexpected threw a spanner in the works just to test us.
The new, huge screen in Studio one, on which we were really banking to enhance the emotional impact of our piece, wasn’t working properly as the projector was broken the previous day. Great. However, our months of working as a team meant this didn’t get the better of us and our new-found collaborative skills saw that between us we manged to sort it and still use the screen with a strategically placed alternative projector. Disaster averted.
As the project draws to a close I am left with a surprising feeling that this has all been both worthwhile and beneficial. It’s great to know that I was a part of putting on a ‘proper’ concert, one that could be transferable to other venues and, in the process, have learnt skills to repeat this feat in the future.
The collaborative process has been eye opening too. The early days of the unspoken establishment of the group dynamic, deliberate negotiation and the development of ideas, gave way to an intuitive flow (Czikszentmihalyi, 2009) where we relied on our embodied tacit knowledge (Polanyi,1966). It was satisfying to see the transition of the slow, and at times uncomfortable negotiations about creative decisions transform into our innate knowledge of digital sound and image (Bartu), professional organisation (Nancy), contemporary rock and singers (Glauco), Eastern Bloc culture (Pavel) and Classical music (me). However, it was this stretching of comfort zones that resulted in these innate skills being utilized innovatively. As Czikszentmihalyi, points out, “The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990).
The difficulties of collaboration
As is evident in my previous posts, the most stressful part for me was relinquishing control – not necessarily when it came to the creative decisions, but when it came to organisation and goal setting. Being a working mother of two, I’m used to managing my time efficiently and procrastination isn’t my friend. It was interesting that, those who shared similar life responsibilities with me, shared my want to get things done and organised. Popham and Mitchell corroborate this with their findings that parents have a significant reduction in their leisure time (Popham and Mitchell, 2006). Daly (2001) also highlights the gap between the illusion of parenting ideals and the reality of the inherent pressures and expectations.
However, wanting to immediately pin ourselves down to ideas was something myself and Glauco in particular had to fight. The problem with this want to immediately start ‘problem solving’ (Sawyer, 2007, p44)) is that it’s likely to lead to what Paulus & Nijstad (2003) calls fixation. Fixation can take many forms but, in this instance, would likely be brought about by my drawing on previous knowledge and recent experience to implement a ‘mechanized’ thought process (Luchins and Luchins, 1959) which would greatly hinder any real creativity or flow of ideas. This comfort of drawing on what I already know well, and previous coping strategies is in contrast to the discomfort created by really entering into collaboration and creating the conditions described by Csikszentmihalyi above. Thankfully Nancy was on hand to remind us not to narrow our options too hastily, no matter how desperate our want to have a plan of action and something tangible to put in our note pads.
Perhaps the biggest difficulty came with the inherent freedom of the task, sure, we were given the theme and the constraint of little to no money, but other than that, the world was our oyster. Keith Sawyer cites ‘ten flow-enabling conditions’ that are required for the creation of ‘group genius’ (Sawyer, 2003, p44-45) and points to a study of more than five hundred professionals and managers in thirty companies which “found that unclear objectives became the biggest barrier to effective team performance” (ibid). So, it was possibly this freedom that at times hampered our flow of ideas as Sawyer calls it (ibid). However, as a consensus emerged amongst us about the goal of the project, the dynamics of the group changed, and an exchange of ideas and collective enthusiasm prevailed. Things were certainly ‘flowing’ and we all started to feel more excited about the possibilities.
Once we had settled on the idea of looking at the impact of the wall from several personal perspectives I felt more comfortable with the process. We were narrowing down the possibilities and things transformed from being overwhelming to a ‘problem-solving creative task’ with a clear goal (ibid).
Despite my apprehension about the truly collaborative nature of the delegation of tasks and research, the discovery of serial collaboration as discussed in a previous post reassured me that this was indeed still a form of collaboration. Ultimately, I think we had a good mix of serial, parallel and synchronised collaboration along the way (Fishcer et al, 2005, p482-512).
Lessons learnt from collaborating
I have left this process with a warm glow. A feeling of having been a part of something good but also having learnt to allow others to assume the role of, as the psychologist Vygotsky puts it, the More Knowledgeable Other (MKO) – ie One who knows more about a certain subject and ultimately broadened my ‘zone of proximal development’ (Vygotsky, 1978). I’d say, as we are all musicians, for the most part, the MKO for me was Bartu. His knowledge of digital improvisation and graphics really impressed me, and I think I have slightly increased my knowledge of these areas. Nancy also served as a MKO when it came to programming and general organisation of the task. She’s very experienced when it comes to putting on concerts and her efficiency has hopefully rubbed off a little.
Our group was made up of three men and two women. I think looking back, from an ethnograpihcal perspective, it’s interesting to observe that the most organised of the group were those who are also parents. To whittle this down even further, I’d say the (slightly more mundane) tasks of venue booking and date fixing were taken on by the two female parents. My research has found no evidence of an ‘organisational gene’ but lots of supporting evidence that such behaviours are learnt through societal traditions and environment. As John-Steiner (2006, p105) points out, gender stereo-typing takes place from soon after birth and the treatment of females means they assume a role which incorporates more of a collaborative, inter-dependant relationship with society. As a result, Ann Dyson found, even as children, girls are predisposed to get ‘deeply involved in the intricacies of interpersonal connections, while boys fantasize about mastery and achievement through identification with “superheroes” ‘ (John-Steiner, 2006; Dyson, 1995). So perhaps Nancy and I, being female, were more accustomed to dividing and taking on tasks and working as a group to create something bigger.
To conclude, I have been surprised numerous ways by this project. By my, at times, unwillingness to compromise on ideas (not something I am proud of but have learnt from), the gender stereotyping that leaks into every aspect of life, that people shouldn’t be underestimated in their thought processes and abilities and, above all, that collaboration really can produce something great and worthwhile and unattainable as an individual.
References
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row.
Dyson, A.H. (1995) Writing children:Reinventing the development of childhood literacy ‘Written communication’ 12 (p4-46)
Fischer G. Giaccardi E. Eden H. Sugimoto M. Ye Y. (2005) Beyond Binary Choices: Intergrating Individual and social creativity p482-512
John-Steiner, V. (2006) Creative Collaboration, Oxford University Press
Paulus, P.B. Nijstad, B.A. (2003) Group Creativity: Innovation through Collaboration
Popham, F. Mitchell, R. (2006) Leisure time exercise and personal circumstances in the working age population: longitudinal analysis of the British household panel survey Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health
Polanyi, M. (1966) The Tacit Dimension. London, Routledge. University of Chicago Press.
Sawyer, K. (2008) Group Genius Published by Basic Books
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Anne-Marie Curran Cundy 