Whilst in a module session (on 27/01/19) we were asked to work collaboratively on a task with students on the BA (hons) Creative Writing course. We formed small groups consisting of two photography students and one creative writing student, with my group consisting of myself, Courtney Burkinshaw (from photography) and Hannah Price (from creative writing).
The task involved responding creatively using either photography or a piece of writing in any way that we saw relevant, and to post these responses in an app named Cluster. Our responses could have been inspired by ideas, themes, an aesthetic, content, structure, or subject matter.
We were encouraged to work quickly on the task, with a just a twenty minute time limit to post our responses, encouraging the formation of quick creative concepts rather than polished work.
When working on the task I found it easy to work with the other members of my group, as we all remained focused for the duration of the task and stuck to the time limit set, allowing work to be produced in a consistent flow. Due to our group being productive and consistent we didn’t experience any major issues. Courtney and I stayed together for the duration of the task and therefore were able to share ideas if we struggled to come up with responses, but we rarely found lack of ideas to be an issue.
Due to the time limit, I found that I had to form my ideas quickly and that I often photographed the first relevant matter that I saw. Although I am happy with the concepts behind my responses and the sequence our group formed, I usually like to take my time when photographing to produce quite polished imagery, and I don’t think this is reflected in my responses. In summary, I think the work I produced is relevant to my groups responses, but I personally do not value it.
To conclude, I enjoyed this experience as I found it interesting and beneficial to work with an individual with a different skillset. Through this collaboration we produced a varied response of both writing and photography, which could be viewed as being more interesting than just being photography alone, and we were able to use each other’s ideas to inspire new ones. In the future I would definitely like to collaborate again with creatives working in different mediums to make use of both of our skillsets and to allow for more varied artistic responses.
Included below is an image compiling all of our responses from Cluster. The order of our responses goes from left to right and then down to the next row, and so on.
aimeegleavesphotoppp1 