The Orchestra that is Collaboration
For an upcoming episode of my Cool Collaborations podcast, I had the privilege of speaking with Tai Lake, one of the co-founders of the Hawaii Artists Collaboration. At a point in our conversation when we were exploring how Tai defines the idea of collaboration, he said:
“Imagine you were a flute player, or a saxophone, or a violin, and you are the best in the world. You can do amazing things and you’re fantastic. Imagine the music you can make. And then, one day, you discover an orchestra filled with people who are all the best in the world. Now imagine the music you can make together. That’s what collaboration is.”
How beautiful, and elegant, and simple! A metaphor that embodies what is often so hard to convey about why collaboration is important and worthy.
The Hawaii Artist Collaboration (or Colab for short) is all about creating an ‘orchestra’ for artists; a place where artists from different backgrounds, different artistic media, and different cultures come together to create. Colab is not like the kind of collaboration with which I am familiar, where there’s a focus on a complex problem and those who are involved are selected because they have some expertise or knowledge or some other angle on the problem. To me, the Colab that Tai described, and others like it around the world, seems to be a purer form of collaboration, where the artists who attend aren’t interested in the result per se, but are gathering to elevate their arts collectively, to learn, to experiment, and to discover.
Our conversation has given me pause to think about who we involve in collaboration. As I mentioned, the talent involved is often framed by the problem. It seems, as I think about it, that we are missing the opportunity to discover the creativity that comes from people beyond that circle of knowledge. I don’t mean looking to similar problems in other industries or in other place, but rather looking to top craftsman in completely unrelated fields to explore what might be possible.
My conversation with Tai was one of those that built on itself. We recorded the episode, stopped the recording, and then continued to chat about some of the other things happening as a result of the Hawaiian Colab. And then, due to a technical issue, we had to re-record a short portion of the episode. We got just as involved in the conversation the second time. It’s safe to say that I thoroughly enjoyed our discussion and am grateful for Tai and his willingness to share this thoughts and insights.
Please check out the Hawaii Artists Collaboration and some of the sister colabs around the world, such as the EMMA Collaboration (Saskatchewan, Canada), CollaborationNZ (Whangarei, New Zealand), and the Echo Lake Collaborative Conference (Newtown, Pennsylvania).
Happy Collaborating!
Scott Millar often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. Through Collaboration Dynamics, he offers a program in High Performance Collaboration, where he guides groups to explore the nature of collaboration, inclusivity, and innovation, and acquire new abilities to create the conditions that enable groups to contribute and thrive in challenging environments.
Scott is also the host of the Cool Collaborations podcast where he explores fun stories and insights of successful collaboration with guests from around the world, and then dives into what made them work. Cool Collaborations is currently available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.
