Why Creativity Loves Collaboration

Why Creativity Loves Collaboration

Over the last few months I’ve been involved in an organically wonderful collaboration - Croydon Creative Business Hub - and witnessing the magic that happens when creativity finds good company.  We’ve been having weekly meetings at Croydon’s central arts venue Matthews Yard and inviting local creatives to come and chat with us about their visions and challenges. As a result our first event has grown from a healthy soil of collaborative conversations and will take place on 29th May - Access All Areas - Practical Solutions for Creative Businesses - to which of course you’re all invited.

Experiencing this process with my wonderful collaborators (Leena Sowambur - Positively Music, Rob Wilson Jnr - Fluid4Sight and Peter Coulston - RealMusik) has lead me to reflect on what happens when we collaborate and why it promotes creative growth.

Creativity Loves Company
One of the comments made frequently by creatives is how much they benefit from meeting each other in physical rather than virtual reality.  Many creative arts require essential periods of focused solitude - writing, composing, designing etc.  However without collaboration we can end up feeling shy, isolated, demotivated and disconnected. Whilst the process may be solitary, a creative product needs to be shared - to be taken off the shelf and be handled, touched, listened to, experienced, seen, tasted.  Most marketing drives are powered by this simple need to share with others - to find a creative companionship with readers, listeners, clients, fans.

Creativity Loves Connection
Creativity grows fast with connections - just as fruits, shoots and flowers grow from roots and branches.  In business speak this means building contacts and networks. Creative communities grow organically from the conversations, ideas, projects, referrals, shared resources and skillswops that thrive in the soil of collaboration.

Creativity Loves Caring
We all as human beings need affirmation, support, nurture - as do our creative visions, projects and businesses. Finding the right creative crew helps us to build confidence and a support system around our dreams.

Creativity Loves Challenge
The best creative collaborators challenge each other - lovingly and respectfully - to grow.  We need people on our team who keep us accountable and ask - how’s the book going? when’s the album coming out? have you contacted that VIP yet? when are you going to put your prices up?  There can also be challenging and chaotic periods in the best of collaborative relationships - which serve to refine our purpose and help us learn about ourselves and each other.

Creativity Loves Clarity
The creative process often involves taking risks, following hunches and being ready to follow the mysterious call of the muse into the unknown. Just like No Mans Land is defined by the Known that surrounds it, all of these numinous processes are grounded and supported by clear agreements, contracts, commitments and boundaries.  Just as my voice grows when I commit to singing everyday, my album grows when I commit to a clear collaboration with a Producer.

Creativity Loves Celebration
It’s so much more fun when there are friends to celebrate with us when the book has been published, the album has hit the top 10 on iTunes, the theatre piece has had a sell out tour or the exhibition has launched.  Creativity is incubated in periods of solitude and birthed into our communities and societies where it has an invaluable contribution to offer.  Collaboration offers us empowering choices and connections, enabling us to flourish as confident communicators. We become aware of the context within which our own work grows and are able to celebrate everyone’s creative contribution to our communities.

Wishing you a wonderful creative May

Tips for Creative Collaboration

* Grow slow - take time to grow organic relationships
* Set clear agreements - and renegotiate as you go along
* Be accountable - commit to actioning ideas and support each other to follow through
* Care - affirm, uplift and celebrate each other

Easter Eggs for the Ears

Easter Eggs for the Ears


The Seasonal Party Cycle
Following the patterns of nature, in many traditions, periods of fasting, reflection and retreat are followed by massive feasts and celebrations.  Here in the London, as Eostre/ Easter, Passover/Pesach and Beltaine approaches, Nature is definitely having a big party.  Blossoms are bursting from every tree branches and fresh green leaves uncurl in streams of spring sunshine. So welcome after winter, the ecstatic beauty of Spring rising is truly wonderful to experience.

Eggsistential Listening
The reflection that precedes the party, is as important a contrast as the winter is to spring.  Times of rest and retreat support us to attune our listening more deeply for what is true.  We may question our habits, addictions, behaviours, thought patterns, temptations, relationships - does this really serve me?  Whilst there may be things we need to release, sackcloth and ashes are not required.  Retreat allows us to incubate and grow our dreams. Healthy self reflection makes space for us to listen for that which truly makes our heart sing and to allow our creativity, wisdom, passion and joy to guide us forward.  Breakthroughs follow - I’ve seen clients blossom as their natural song bursts out of them. 

Testing, testing 123
There will always be manifold potential distractions from our truth - whether that’s an hour lost on Facebook or a text from that best-left-as-an-ex-lover who still knows how to tug on the heartstrings.  All the best loved stories feature the heroine/hero facing epic trials and tribulations on their quest for truth. Truth doesn’t arrive shrink wrapped from Amazon. It’s more of a verb than a noun, because it involves a daily process of refinement as we change and grow. So the tests are really helpers in disguise and as Luke Skywalker discovers when he meets Darth Vader, our foes are often far more familiar to us than we like to admit, for they are there to catalyze our development.

Eggstatic Natural Highs
Times of testing can of course be really tough. The good news is that when we are trying to kick any sort of habit - whether thats releasing an addiction to a substance, workplace or relationship - there are always abundant natural highs available.   Staying tuned to happy-inducing practices enables us to re-ground, re-group, re-solve and re-sonate fully.  It might be baking a loaf of bread, weeding the garden, singing our favourite song, stopping to take a breathful of blossom, running around the park, walking the dog or simply just sitting still and allowing whatever is to wash through us.  The party that follows retreat allows us to celebrate our growth and share our creativity with others.

Here’s a little musical Egg for your Ears
It’s a song by Mica Paris that I drifted into my ears on the breeze one afternoon and whispered some wisdom to me on the matter of staying true
- My One Temptation - click here to download
Wishing you a truly eggciting eggxhilarating Easter/Spring Break

Tips for Hatching Happy Creative Eggs
1. Get Broody - give yourself permission to follow your dreams and nourish your creative self with inspirational, uplifting activities and practices
2. Incubate - Keep your projects safe and entrust them only to selected friends and mentors who will be supportive and constructive.
3. Welcome and Work Through Resistance - creativity catalyzes, so if you are hitting tests, you’re on the right track!
4. Hatch & Celebrate - plan a launch party that allows you to celebrate in style!