Magombe.A.Research

C The Story of Creating Creative Communities Anna Magombe

An evaluative look at how the Creating Creative Communities project took shape and grew from a research project into functioning resource for students and graduates.

Contents 5 THE STORY OF CCC 6 A solution to a problem 10 Promotion of a solution 18 Potential of the Programme 20 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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The Story of CCC

A solution to a problem Creating Creative Communities began as a research project at London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. It was started by Design for Graphic Communication student, Anna Magombe, in response to the difficulties faced by students in developing professional networks and getting into the creative industries.

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“The Creating Creative Communities (CCC) project was inspired by the positive experiences I had whilst collaborating on design projects during my time on the FdA and BA Design for Graphic Communication courses. I found that the creative process and outcomes of group projects were really interesting and unexpected. A lot can be learnt from working with different kinds of people too, especially those with different specialisms and styles of working than your own. Through each different collaborative project, new transferable skills could be learnt and improved, that could benefit the development of portfolio work and ease the transition from student to working life in the creative industries.

Through CCC I hoped that other students and graduates would be able to find out more about collaborative working and take advantage of its benefits for their own personal and professional development. Many students face difficulties in accessing the creative industries without strong networks, and I believed that this could be an alternative way to approach, maybe even tackle, the issue of social mobility.

In order to find out how important collaboration was to students and those already working in the creative industry, a pilot survey was carried out asking students and graduates what their career goals are and how they currently try to reach these goals.

They were also asked how often they collaborate with their peers, what kind of experiences they had, and how useful they thought collaboration could be in developing their careers.�

How often do you collaborate with other students or graduates in creating work for your portfolio or to get noticed in the design industry?

All the time When I have time Sometimes Occasionally Never

How useful is collaboration to your creative career?

It is important to work with others, but I prefer to work on my own.

It is important and I would like to work more with other students/graduates.

It is quite useful to work with others, but not very important for my career.

It is important to work with others, I already do it quite a lot.

It is extremely important, I would not be able to make it without working with others.

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“I wanted to find a new way for students and graduates to be able to participate in collaborative projects, showcase their outcomes, and learn more about the skills and qualities that could be developed. A website would be ideal for this and I discussed this as a possibility with I Know a Guy – a collective I work with on creative projects. We already work collaboratively on a range of projects and had talked about doing so with a wider range of people from various disciplines. I thought it would be an interesting way of expanding on the kinds of projects that we do but I found that one of the difficulties of working with a group is that it can be difficult to organize and work to the same goal sometimes. With this being a problem, I had to focus on creating a service of sorts on my own, which meant tasks could not be shared and a lot more organization and good time management was needed on my part.”

Promotion of a solution Creating Creative Communities is comprised of several elements: a blog which documents ongoing research into collaborative working and the workshops that have been organised as part of the research; a Facebook page where people can join in or start their own creative projects; a handbook on Collaboration which is a guide for students and graduates containing useful information and tips on collaboration from people at different stages of their creative career.

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“I planned to organize group workshops so I researched creative collaborative games and activities for inspiration.

The focus would be more on University of the Arts (UAL) students as a target audience as it would be easier to communicate with them and use UAL facilities and spaces to run workshops. I conducted surveys to find out if people would be interested in participating and what kinds of projects they would like to do. There was a positive response and I got some useful information that helped me plan the workshops.

A blog was created to record research and a Facebook page was connected to the blog so that all posts automatically updated the Facebook page. Members would be able to see useful links on networking and collaboration as well as ‘events’ giving the opportunity to join in with projects or activities. Online social networking seemed an appropriate method of connecting students. A benefit of having a Facebook page as opposed to a group was the option to view or download statistics for the usage of the page, which would help me to evaluate the CCC service as I went along and to know how

effective promotion was. The main method of promotion was to post links for the page on UAL and UAL affiliated Facebook groups and pages.

This helped to gain a few members but it was still quite difficult to gain members beyond my circle of peers.

I also spread the word by talking to people and linking the blog to Twitter so that a wider range of people would know about CCC. It would have been more effective to create printed material such as posters and flyers to advertise around UAL sites as well but there was limited time to do so.”

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“The workshops were fun to do, particularly Doodlethon day – I got friends, family and people that I did not know involved in a variety of activities. It was disappointing and frustrating when things did not go to plan, such as people not turning up but this was part of the process of learning more about what happens when people collaborate. I surveyed and interviewed people that participated to find out how they felt about the creative process, outcomes, and their own development through participating in the workshops. People seemed to enjoy the workshops I organised, which was great.

I also compared the CCC workshops with other forms of collaboration – more formal meetings and spontaneous group work. The responses were quite varied and suggested that everyone’s experiences even of the same activity would be different. Being able to summarise the findings would be tricky and I decided that if I were to create a summary of my findings in a book, it would have to be more of a guide with suggestions and tips, leaving it openended so that people could find out more for themselves if they chose to.”

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“The idea for the Handbook on Collaboration came about from the desire to capture all the research findings in a physical format that could be used as a reference. The website/blog is also well suited to the nature of the project, as it can easily be updated with new projects, partnerships, and information. I wanted the handbook to have the feel of something current and updated like a magazine but still having a slight authoritative feel like an educational advisory handbook with a more casual voice. The feel of the book should reflect the importance of collaboration for career development but still be seen as something accessible and fun to do. I think this comes across in the voice of the book and its layout and design. I would have liked to experiment more with paper stocks and printing techniques but this was difficult due to financial constraints.

As well as opinions from students and the outcomes from workshops, it was important to get information from people in the creative industry and from careers advisors who could comment on how important collaboration could be in the working world and for the transition into it. I emailed and spoke to several creative professionals and their interviews were included in the handbook. It was great to get different viewpoints and to find out things that I would not have thought of. Hopefully this would make the book more of an interesting read for others too. Sometimes it was hard to get responses from people working in studios because they are busy people but I persevered and think I got a good range of feedback.�

Potential of the programme

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There is the potential for the CCC project to grow in different ways.

Its strength is that it is a useful resource that is regularly used by members of the Creating Creative Communities blog and Facebook page. Its weakness is its instability and currently small user membership due to lack of promotion. See the booklet “The Future of Creating Creative Communities” for more about the potential of the programme.

“Through Siobhan Clay, (Supporting Enterprise. I found her advice really Student Transitions Project couseful and it was interesting to find ordinator, UAL) who I have been out more about the services already working with on a website for being provided by UAL to help new students, I found out about a students enter the creative industries. project also called Creating Creative Staff at UAL were very helpful so it Communities being run by Patricia was not hard to get in touch and ask Kaszynska (Policy and Research for tips and advice, although at the Coordinator, SUARTS). I spoke to her time it was quite difficult to explain about the research that she was doing where this project was heading. A to develop the community at UAL and meeting with Pai-Chin Tay (Enterprise found it exciting that there was similar Officer, ECCA) made me realise that for research already happening. We were this to be a successful programme or approaching the issue from different venture, it would need to be a lot more angles: the Student Union are focusing clear and defined in terms of what I on student attitudes – what are hoped to offer students and graduates, student expectations? What motivates and give people more reasons to want or prevents them from collaborating to get involved. I think it would be and networking? My project looks more difficult to offer an efficient and wellat different types of collaboration, rounded service without the help of what the benefits and downsides are, UAL, external agencies, and a lot of and how this information can be used determination. to encourage people to work together.

However, it was useful to exchange It is positive to think that there is research and to see the potential for the potential for collaboration with how Creating Creative Communities different agencies and individuals to could be part of something bigger than make CCC more functional and exciting what it was. for other people, but since it is a non-profit service, for the meantime I also spoke to Hannah Clements it may be better for me to focus on (Careers Officer for Careers & making sure it is a useful resource for Enterprise, UAL) who runs a Creative information - frequently updated and Networking blog for Careers & easily accessible.”

“By communicating with all the people that contributed to the handbook and website, I learnt a lot about networking and collaboration myself.

People have different reasons for networking, and many need a purpose to collaborate. However, there is collaboration occurring all the time – much of it spontaneous and natural.

There are a lot of people that are willing to help others without needing much of a reason, just because it is good, but it is not entirely altruistic.

Humans like interacting and learning from each other, and I have thoroughly enjoyed talking to new people and learning from my peers. Collaboration

and networking is natural but it can also be a scary thing to make yourself do. I hope that the resources provided

by Creating Creative Communities can help someone gain confidence to do the same by going outside of their comfort zone and challenging themselves to work in a different way, or to find out how to make the most out of working with others.�

Anna Magombe

Acknowledgements Creating Creative Communities was created in collaboration with: Students Union of the Arts http://www.suarts.org/ Creative Careers http://www.arts.ac.uk/student/careers/ Enterprise Centre for the Creative Arts http://www.ecca-london.org/ Artists, designers, creative network and agency staff all around London (See the Handbook on Collaboration for more information) Staff and students at University of the Arts London

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My family and friends