ART & LIFE CONTEXTS ––– A Short Guide
HOW TO Co-CREATE The
5 W‘s & 4 Phases
By FOA-FLUX With illustrations by Rada Leu and Michèle Caduff
Introduction In recent years, we have teamed up with colleagues from India, Bhutan, Hong Kong, Malawi, South Africa, Venezuela, Switzerland to explore art notions within specific contexts and with a particular reach. On every occasion, this involves negotiating a multitude of expectations, interests, and aims. When Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) asked us to share our experiences and to design a course on intercultural work for lecturers from ZHdK and HSLU (Lucerne University of the Arts), we came up with the idea of producing a short guide about how to connect people: we envisaged a readily accessible booklet that would help its readers to remember the key aspects for ensuring successful and satisfying teamwork experiences. There is a vast literature on teamwork, especially in the fields of project management and intercultural exchange. We have read many of these books and so have our colleagues. Some are listed at the end of this booklet. FOA-FLUX Annemarie Bucher & Dominique Lämmli
This booklet This booklet presents the key points for designing and implementing co-creative projects. It is not simply yet another extensive overview of the many guides and self-help books in the field. Using checklists, it instead highlights the crucial aspects and factors of designing teamwork in complex surroundings and settings. This booklet ensures you will consider the essentials for successfully planning your teamwork throughout all project phases. It’s your memory board, designed to help you negotiate the highs and lows of project production. True to this objective, this booklet provides memorable and condensed tools for successful co-creation in complex settings involving multiple interest groups.
Working with complexity! We often forget the obvious: co-creation means dealing with different expectations, interests, ideas, motivations, and aims! Ask yourself: • How do others connect with my/our goals? • Do I/we let others find their own answers? • Do I/we allow multi-perspectival approaches? • Do I/we allow agile processes?
When co-creating, pay attention to these factors: • Communication style • Feedback and evaluation culture • Decision-making styles • Trust-building • Notions of consensus and disagreement • Persuasion and negotiation • Concepts of leadership • Approaches to planning and scheduling • Egalitarian and hierarchical cultures
These forms of cultural behaviour are informed by societal, institutional, personal, religious, and disciplinary factors. We are often too entrenched in our thought style. We cling to our beliefs and goals. Forgetting cultural specifics can stall your project, sow misunderstanding, and prevent you from defining goals and processes acceptable enough to everyone involved. Differences are not written in stone. Diverse traditions, styles, and behaviours are constantly blended, re-iterated, and altered through individual and group actions.
THE 5 W’s
WHO?
For
WHOM?
WHAT? WHERE?
WHEN?
WHO?
For WHOM?
Role in the project? • • • Contracter? • • • • • • Remuneration? • • • Educational, family, social, cultural, religious background? • • • • • • Knowledge levels? • • • Belief systems? • • • Expectations? • • • Uncertainties? • • • Economic, social, political, religious, status? •••
Place? • • • Setting? • • • • • • Cost coverage? • • • • • • Cultural particularities? • • • Technical possibilities? • • • Role in the given context? • • • • • • Light and sound conditions? • • • Accessibility? • • • •••
Etc.
Etc.
WHAT? Content? • • • Action? • • • Form? • • • • • • Conditions? • • • Type of knowledge production? • • • Material? • • • • • • Reach? •••
WHERE?
Etc.
WHEN? Date? • • • Alternative dates? • • • • • • Duration? • • • Significance? • • • • • • Who is able to participate? • • • Relation to other events? • • • • • • Time window? • • • •••
Etc.
_______________________________________________
Note: Financing aspects inform all 5 W’s and
should be considered accordingly.
Apply the 5 W’s to the 4 Phases
RESPECT --CONNECT --EXCHANGE --VALUE ---
> RESPECT This is the start phase. Search for potential partners. Respect their knowledge, know-how, thought contexts. Envisage how your partner’s context and yours might be linked. What do you have to offer? > VALUE This is the follow-up phase. Acknowledge all contributions when presenting the co-creation. Emphasise that the outcome is based on co-creation. Value everyone’s roles and contributions. Share appraisal with everyone involved.
> CONNECT This is the preparation phase. Connect with potential partners. Co-decide how to plan, execute, and value co-creation. (Co-)design the co-creation phase, ideally leaving space for agile processes and transformations > EXCHANGE This is the implementation phase. Co-creation takes place. Co-creation provides new insights into your partner(s)’s perspectives, approaches, and skills unknown when you first discussed co-creation. It will be the same for your partner(s). Stay open, flexible, and agile. Experience shows that some of the most exciting productions and insights emerge from what first seemed an obstacle or shortcoming.
Your notes
Agile project transformations Apply all 5 W’s in all phases to ensure successful co-creation.
5 W’s & 4 Phases A quick, easy, and efficient way of establishing the critical success factors of your project.
Critical success factors are facts that you should take into account to ensure your project achieves its mission. These factors help us to understand the overall setting and individual specifics. These factors vary. You will need to redefine them for every new project.
How to establish success factors? Apply the 5 W’s to the 4 Phases. The 5 W´s quickly and efficiently establish our success factors. 1
Assess all four phases with the 5 W’s. A broad approach is enough at this stage.
2
Compare your findings.
3
What becomes apparent? What haven’t you taken into account yet? What are the problematic areas and dynamics?
4
5
6
Formulate these problematic areas and dynamics to define your critical success factors. Which actions and measures will help to avoid your project being hindered by these problematic areas and dynamics?
Apply the 5 W’s and 4 Phases to describe everyone and everything in terms of these critical success factors.
7
Compare your findings.
Common goals Find common goals to ensure different interests can be met. How to negotiate trans- and interdisciplinary goals? Clarify! Working in ART & LIFE CONTEXTS, Acknowledging COMPLEXITY, There is no final verdict on
WHO? For
WHOM?
WHAT? WHERE?
WHEN? Ideally, these questions will guide and support you from start to finish.
Further reading Brzyski, Anna (2007). Introduction: Canons and Art History. In: AB, ed., Partisan Canons, Durham and London: Duke University Press. 1–25 Cook, Curtis R. (2005) Just Enough Project Management. New York: McGraw-Hill. (2016). HBR‘s 10 must reads on managing across cultures. Boston, Massachusetts :Harvard Business Review Press. (2013). HBR‘s 10 must reads on collaboration. Boston, Massachusetts :Harvard Business Review Press. Helguera, Pablo (2011). Socially Engaged Art. A Materials and Techniques Handbook. New York: Jorge Pinto Books. Huybrechts, Liesbeth, ed. (2014). Participation Is Risky. Approaches to Joint Creative Processes. Amsterdam: Valiz, Distributor: London: Antennae. Kester, Grant H. (2011). The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context. Durham: Duke University Press. Koh, Jay (2015). Art-Led Participative Processes: Dialogue and Subjectivity within Performances in the Everday. Helsinki: Academy of Fine Arts. Meyer, Erin (2015). The Culture Map. Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures. New York: Public Affairs. Sholette, Gregory and Blake Stimson, Blake, eds. (2007). Collectivism. After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination After 1945. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Your notes
FOA-FLUX (Annemarie Bucher, Dominique Lämmli) How to co-create. The 5 W‘s & 4 Phases With illustrations by Rada Leu and Michèle Caduff Booklet content and design: FOA-FLUX Illustrations: Rada Leu Illustration page 10: Michèle Caduff Proof-reading: Mark Kyburz Commissioned by ZHdK/Dossier Internationales: David Keller, Bettina Ganz Produced by FOA-FLUX Zurich 2016 FOA-FLUX and ZHdK/Dossier Internationales Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License ISBN 978-3-906126-26-5