Interesting article about the fourth annual If You Could exhibition. This one's If You Could Collaborate. http://bit.ly/CRarticle

Great exhibition on the theme of collaboration in the form of partnerships coming up at Sorcha Dallas – Gilbert and George, local duo Joanne Tatham and Tom O'Sullivan to Rita Donagh and Richard Hamilton...

http://www.thisiscentralstation.com/events/love.aspx

http://alittlepieceofmind.org/
A quilt project from Glasgow based design agency Marque. Not sure if this is strictly collaboration or more a curation of names and faces, but hey it's being auctioned for homelesseness charidees... Being exhibited in London, New York then back to Glasgow

Through collaboration, I've found myself working not only as a designer and maker of my own designs, but as a maker of other people's designs, a designer of projects made by others, a tutor to students designing furniture for me to make, a design consultant to other makers, a manufacturer paying royalties to other designers...

Increasingly I find that there is no 'good' design outside of context, and the degree of appropriateness of a design to the clients' needs is the most important element of context. When I first began designing and making furniture I was essentially working to two briefs - the needs of the client and my own agenda, which I tried to shoehorn in whenever possible. Years of designing, making and I now realize, collaborating later I am much happier to embrace the needs of the context and only apply my own agenda if if offers real value. The ultimate expression of this is when issues other than visual beauty are given priority because they are more appropriate. In the 'connecting plates' project (5mins 0secs in the video above), strength, precision and economy took precedence over beauty very successfully.

Conventionally, a commission entails a transfer of responsibility from one person to another, with an assumed transfer of 'ownership'. However, the best working relationships entail a client retaining a sense of 'ownership' in the design process, increasing the value of the end result to all concerned. In fact, I have never worked on a project where I have had complete freedom, and as a designer I would be lost if I did. Even the act of a client presenting a brief or a problem is a participation of sorts, and hence all commissions are in fact collaborations to some degree.

Thoughts?

Hi dstitch, I like that quote re collaboration and relationships – fairly accurate, though perhaps the ideal scenario. Collaborations come about in a variety of ways, and I'm interested in how people define 'collaboration' – as opposed to, say, 'commission'. True collaborative process can offers up a lot more than just ideas, and also helps individuals become less precious. It takes more work though – collaborating on a larger scale can almost be a project in itself. Here's another public art online link:
http://tiny.cc/j9LKt which is documenting (live) a project I'm involved that I've mentioned before, and is worth looking at in terms of multi-disciplinary collaboration. There are 7 of us currently working on a public art plan for Calgary – two artists, two architects, a graphic designer, a social geographer and an engineer. The commissioning body are also involved at a creative level. The project is led by Sans Facon – who can also be found on here. ( /sans facon )