When it comes to collaborating on innovative and inspiring digital projects, Bristol’s Pervasive Media Studio, partners for the latest of our Beauty of Digital events, has amassed a wealth of experience since it was established in 2008. Here, Pervasive Media Studio Producer Verity Alexander offers some thoughts on the benefits and challenges of collaborative working.
The Pervasive Media Studio was established in 2008 with a clear ambition – to bring together in one place a brilliant community of innovators with a wide range of skills. We hold strong to the belief that by spending time in one another’s company, being generous with our ideas, having arguments and drinking beers (not necessarily in that order), all of our ideas get better.
Now, approaching our fourth birthday and in our second, larger premises, we work collaboratively with a vibrant community of over 100 technologists, academics and creative practitioners. Together, we’re testing the kinds of pervasive media products, services and experiences that will shape the way we all live in the future.
Collaboration is not a new idea and most of us do it all the time, but when it comes to collaborating professionally, it doesn’t always seem so easy.
Collaboration is not a new idea and most of us do it all the time, whether it’s sharing photos on Facebook, drafting in a friend with a van to help us move house, or clubbing together to buy a gift. But when it comes to collaborating professionally, it doesn’t always seem so easy. What if the person you choose to work with let’s you down? How do you protect your ideas and how does IP even work when ideas are shared? Is there ever such a thing as an equal partnership?
We don’t claim to have the solutions, but we do have a compelling back catalogue of successful and not so successful collaborative projects under our belts. So, emboldened by that experience, we’d like to suggest a few ideas when it comes to collaborating professionally:
Work with people who are not like you
When Tin Bath, a theatre company producing work that is accessible to deaf audiences, started working with Yousif Ahmed, a technologist from the Mixed Reality Lab in Nottingham, they had to work hard even to find a common language to describe their practice. Through a mutual enthusiasm for breaking new ground and a generous approach to sharing and learning, they developed You’re So Happy I Want to Die, creating a live captioning system that responds dynamically to the action on stage.
Choose your collaborators carefully
If your project is important to you, you will be working with your chosen partners extensively. If you have come together for the wrong reasons (i.e. to chase funding), the cracks will begin to show pretty quickly. Mutual respect and the ability to hash it out if it all goes awry is critical to creating something you can both be proud of.
Know why you’re entering into a collaboration
Think about what each partner will get from the relationship – this will not be the same for each of you. For example, in developing the iPhone app Fortunes, a location-based game guiding players around a 19th Century version of Bristol’s docklands, Calvium had the opportunity to develop and test their new platform AppFurnace in a real world context, while Slingshot used the opportunity to apply their approach to pervasive street games to a screen-based application. MShed, meanwhile, were able to co-author an experience that would expand their impact beyond the museum walls and allow visitors to explore the surrounding harbourside in a playful, historically engaged way.
If you would like to collaborate with Pervasive Media Studio, please take a look here for how to get involved. We offer desk and meeting space, support from a dedicated studio producer, introduction to key industry contacts, help with funding applications and a supportive and inspiring environment in which to develop your ideas.
Images: By Toby Farrow
