Working collaboratively

(Nimue)

To be creative is to be collaborative. Ideas about the ‘lone genius’ are misleading at best, and not accurate about how anything gets done. Some of the first forays into rampant individualism were written by chaps who had conveniently forgotten that their mums were doing their laundry and cooking them Sunday lunch….

We all depend on each other. We depend on the people whose work (paid or unpaid) makes out work possible. A lot of creators depend on partners or family for financial support and that’s always been true, and why its a lot easier to become (apparently) successful if you come from an affluent background in the first place.

We depend on each other for inspiration. Genres are a collective project. We all need reviewers and people willing to talk about what we do if that isn’t to be purely for our own amusement.

Every piece of creativity is an interaction between whoever has made it and whoever experiences it. For me, it means that the final form of the piece can exist in many different ways when it lands with someone else. What the person experiencing the creation does with it will be informed by who they are and what they know and think. Every kind of art only really exists in that point of connection, I think.

We can’t always see the collaborations that go into creativity. As an animist I’m also inclined to think about how we collaborate with physical materials, with time, space, the air around us. We’re held by the Earth. Our creativity depends on ecosystems.

It’s good to be alert to all of this, and to talk about the collaborations intrinsic to whatever we’re doing. I think its healthier and more honest to understand ourselves in terms of both the ecological and cultural webs that we are all dependent on and supported by. The idea of the lone genius supports ideas of human supremacy. What is a writer without paper? What is paint without earth pigments?