As I’ve gone deeper into a spectrum of art projects and paid labour over the past few years, focussing on finding, transforming and distributing surplus materials (food, debris, time, knowledge) I have realised how important collaboration is to my worldsphere and perception of useful labour. The introduction of even a singular complementary or conflicting voice can profoundly transform the trajectory of a thought, inflect a micro-fraction of quantum physics, reconfigure a sentiment beyond our narrow interpretations.
I recently listened to the artist Alex Bag talk with internet culture prankster Brad Troemel on his Patreon podcast Your Biggest Fan (behind paywall) and she hit on something I think about often; how a collab between two people creates a third being, a hybrid of intentions and chance. There is an unpredictability to partnering on any task that has the potential to disrupt the safety of control which traditionally we are programmed to crave. The preciousness of individuality is quite a toxic space because we see how problematic viewpoints or actions can easily be vacuum-sealed or ring-fenced, protecting the perpetrator in the name of creativity. Collaborating by definition does not prevent this from happening, particularly as we naturally fall into a hierarchy and navigate social anxieties, but if we are able to accept our co-conspirators come in many sometimes unexpected forms it opens the door to good chaos. The main problem then is figuring out how to stick with it.
One of my fav collaborations was during a residency project with School of the Damned at Guest Projects, Yinka Shonibare’s space in east London in Summer 2017. A small time-based artwork with Jamie Hudson was the pollinator for a long, honest and generous cross-national friendship. We walked, talked and litter-picked on the towpath, thinking about the lasting effects of consumer waste on shared space, then preserved our findings in jesmonite poured into his handmade pine frames. To celebrate, we made a bread & butter pudding from fallen plums and surplus ciabatta from a bakery round the corner which ended up embodying the core of the idea more succinctly. The sharing of the dessert with friends was a more poignant and lasting moment than the physical artworks even though they still sit proudly in my studio, so I think there’s something in here about connecting more to people through the performances and experiences we share than the physicality of material existence.
During a year as an Employment Coach working at Little Gate Farm, a small charity supporting people with Learning Disabilities and Autism into paid work, just outside Hastings, East Sussex, I learnt an unfathomable amount about the barriers people in this community faced on a daily basis - financial, architectural, interpersonal - and realised that my own prejudices and privileges were in need of a deep inspection and also complete overhaul.
I was required, immediately, to reassess my understanding of success. As a neurotypical and able-bodied person, I became aware of what a free-run I had: timekeeping, movement and travel, everyday interactions and relationships were taken for granted. After a few assignments it became glaringly obvious to me that Disabled and Neurodiverse fxlks have been excluded from the workplace because the ideology of efficiency is so deeply embedded in financialised capitalist structures that the need for extra support - practical, physical, emotional - is viewed as a weak link in the unbreakable chain, an achilles heel in the unstoppable beast, and the risk cannot be afforded. Toothless bureaucratic realism.
Despite my attestations during a disciplinary for a young, Autistic man working in an accountants’ office, his shyness was weaponised against him; the line manager was totally ignoring how their condescending tone and overly-convoluted instructions created the embarrassment and confusion that incubated this anxiety. Should this manager have considered the impact of his unconscious bias and fixed a more accepting, cooperative environment, the young man would have kept his job and the org would have held onto a valuable, loyal employee who just wanted a chance to work a ‘normal’ job and be appreciated for who he is. The impenetrability of traditional hierarchy obliterated any opportunities for alternative ways of working; either through internal restructuring or external collaboration.
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When I took on the Brixton Pound Cafe after moving back to London in 2017, I was determined to try and integrate more accessible structures into the business. One method I embedded into the project was volunteering opps for young Disabled and Neurodiverse people. The cafe was running on pennies and we relied heavily on individuals giving their time, so I did my best to open the framework up and blur the boundaries between paid staff, volunteers and customers which also created a platform of respect, trust and friendship (as opposed to one of micro-managing and consumer-sycophancy, which is another whooooole article).
A local SEN school arranged for a non-verbal Autistic student to join me in the kitchen once a week with a support worker, so I would plan in particular elements of the meal that he could assist with, then he would help serve lunch, wash up and make tea for everyone in the cafe whether they requested it or not :) He completed three months of shifts and every week his sister came to collect him and told me how much he enjoyed it.
Another volunteer, a young French man with Learning Disabilities approached me personally about working with us; he worked independently and loved to make coffee, so I focussed his training around using the machine and making freestyle latte art (to the delight of customers). One day he brought in a folder of drawings of coffee machine, hand-written menus and kitchen selfies and we ended up publishing a zine together about his experience (that you can buy direct from me). The project had the capacity for both my love of working with different people and the aspiration to question whether an inclusive alternative to efficient, corporate cafe culture was possible with modest resources.
I’ve found that truly collaborative practices are embodied by relinquishing control and reframing expectations (all perfectionists find this innately hard) in order to allow others in. Having tried and failed many times, with a few successes along the way, it has become more of a methodology, something I now naturally consider in planning and create room for in practice and this is only going to move me forwards.
nice man, when I first started collaborating at Uni I found that I was way too controlling of the outcome and not giving space to the process of the collaboration. An entire education of individualist learning and isolation based achievment had definitely rubbed off on me. It's taken a long time to change the learned behaviour of 'I want to complete this' and not giving the inputs from others a chance. We need to embedd collboration into our language, our homes and our early education sytems. thanks for the thought trigger.
Spot on. You can train people but too managers lack care, empathy or the drive to make adjustments. Large corporates have the means to drive change, but without it coming from the top it relies too heavily on individual managers being prepared to swim against the tide of perceived office wisdom :(