We Make the Road By Collaborating
Collaboration has moved from the sidelines to the center of how we do business and fulfill our arts and cultural missions. As media arts organizations and practitioners, our context is an increasingly interdisciplinary and participatory culture: “We make the road by collaborating” to borrow a sentiment from poet Antonio Machado who said, “We make the road by walking.”
There are many reasons why collaboration is becoming more of an operating norm for our organizations: The diversity and complexity of our communities necessitates that we seek out partners and work jointly to fulfill our missions. The public policy environment has motivated us to amplify our collective voice in advocacy campaigns. The internet and a host of online tools have made it easier to collaborate in an increasingly networked world. Economic realities are challenging us to become even more efficient and cost-effective. And our funders and supporters simply expect us to collaborate to make the most of our strengths without reinventing the wheel.
Toward Conscious Collaboration
The term “collaboration” holds multiple meanings. Based on a review of collaboration literature, the Wilder Research Center defines collaboration as “a mutually beneficial and well-defined relationship entered into by two or more organizations to achieve common goals.” Media arts organizations collaborate frequently and with much success. Just as often, collaborations prove to be frustrating and fail to live up to their potential.
One pervasive barrier to collaboration is the well-ingrained mindset of scarcity (which is amplified by the current economic recession), in which competition for funding and credit overshadow our potential to share, learn, and co-create. Another barrier, closely related to the scarcity mindset, is the challenge of the “nonprofit industrial complex.” This recently coined term sums up our tendencies to protect turf and pursue growth, even when it is not sustainable or mission-oriented.
Entering into any collaboration consciously—with a spirit of inquiry, clear goals, and a few basic agreements—can make a big difference. In our fast paced and often reactive culture, we sometimes skip these fundamentals, only to pay dearly later with wasted time, unsatisfactory results, and fractured relationships.
When considering a new collaboration, the following questions offer a useful framework: Are the project goals defined and mission-aligned (including what you want to accomplish together and what success looks like)? Are the benefits of the collaboration clear (what each organization will get out of it, and what your individual needs/interests are)? Is accountability clear (including who will do what by when, how decisions will be made, and how plans will be monitored and adjusted)? Can you depend on each other (with the right people involved, and enough trust and mutual respect to move forward)? Do you have the necessary resources (including time, money, and expertise)?
Conscious collaboration is not the only answer to the question of how best to operate and flourish in the new environment, but it is at the heart of the matter. When we persist with a “we’ll do it on our own” philosophy, we put our organizations at risk of stagnation—cut off from the flow of ideas and resources (including financial and other resources) we need to fulfill our missions.
Are We Saving Money Yet?
Working in collaboration is often beneficial, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that it will cut costs. For example, if two organizations decide to combine programs to expand their reach, they may assume they will save on administrative costs; however, the time spent on planning, coordinating, and integrating systems may outweigh any savings—at least in the short term.
“Cost-cutting is not always realistic,” says Alyce Myatt, executive director of Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media (GFEM). She notes, “Trust is the most essential element of a collaboration. When you work across different organizational cultures, you need to take the time to communicate to maintain that trust.” Based on working with funders and media arts organizations over many years, Myatt emphasizes the necessity of keeping mission at the forefront. “What’s driving the conversation about collaboration?” she asks. “Is it mission or money? If it’s just about the money, it’s not going to be successful. We can learn that from the private sector, where the landscape is littered with failed mergers and acquisitions that were initially perceived to be financially advantageous.”
Collaboration along a Continuum
Collaboration is not a one-size fits all proposition. Instead, collaborations come in many shapes and sizes, ranging from informal joint projects, to formal joint ventures, to the merging of two or more organizations into a single organization. At NAMAC’s regional gathering in the Bay Area last year, participants highlighted inspiring examples along this continuum, including Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, Ninth Street Independent Film Center, and San Francisco Film Society–Film Arts Foundation.
Joint projects, which are based on relationship-building with partners over time, are central to the work of the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project. According to Kebo Drew, development and events manager of QWOCMAP, the organization serves as a bridge among different communities including LGBT, people of color, immigrants, artists, arts groups, and social justice groups.
“We are educating with film—both to teach filmmaking and to educate about issues in collaboration with other nonprofits,” Drew said. She emphasized, “Our nonprofit partners are deeply involved from the beginning, not brought in near the end.” The results of these joint projects have been mutually beneficial: The nonprofit partners bring new audiences to film screenings, which supports QWOCMAP. The screenings help to grow the constituency for the nonprofits and their issues, which often results in increased membership.
One of the most visible joint ventures in the media arts field is the Ninth Street Independent Film Center in San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMa) district. In late 2001, a consortium of independent media groups purchased the building after two years of planning. Film Arts Foundation, Frameline, the Center for Asian American Media, and San Francisco Jewish Film Festival came together as the original four equity partners in the building, with Canyon Cinema, NAMAC, San Francisco Cinematheque and TILT as non-equity partners. One of the most tangible benefits of the collaboration has been the creation of a building-wide IT department, which provides a greater level of support and expertise than any of the organizations would have been able to accomplish on their own.
At the far end of the collaboration continuum are organizational mergers involving the full integration of two or more groups. Film Arts Foundation (FAF) and San Francisco Film Society pursued this path a few years ago. According to the Film Society’s executive director, Graham Leggat, it was crucial to approach the process with respect and thoughtful language from the start. “We didn’t use corporate language such as acquisition, takeover, or merger,” he emphasized. Instead the approach was to work for a seamless “handoff” of filmmaker services from FAF to the Film Society, while “stewarding” the FAF legacy.
The coming together of the scrappy and cash-strapped FAF with the well-established Film Society seemed unlikely to some. Despite their cultural differences, however, both groups shared a deep concern for indie filmmakers in the Bay Area and a desire to support local, independent filmmaking. In working through the process with his board of directors, Leggat emphasized the most significant assets brought to the table by FAF, “thirty years of relationships at the heart of San Francisco’s filmmaking community.”
Leading the Way
For many media arts groups, collaboration has long been the primary mode for doing business. After all, most long-term media arts organizations are rooted in filmmaking, an inherently collaborative endeavor. Furthermore, our collaborative capacity has grown as we have adapted to an ever-changing stream of media formats, platforms, and applications. Now working with an expanded global network and a growing menu of social media tools, independent media organizations continue to be leaders in twenty-first century collaboration. A few examples follow.
The Media and Democracy Coalition (MADCO), founded in 2005, involves more than thirty regional and national organizations working jointly to promote equal access to a democratic media system. With so much at stake (nothing less than the openness and diversity of our future media system!) and so much complexity in the telecommunications landscape, the coalition offers a structure to develop needed technical and policy expertise, while also bringing the power of multiple voices to the public policy arena.
Appalshop’s Thousand Kites Project (featured in NAMAC’s fall 2008 newsletter), a national dialogue project and multimedia endeavor, has engaged multiple partners and forged unlikely alliances around the common goal of reforming the U.S. prison system. Building on the story-sharing ethic that has been Appalshop’s hallmark for 40 years, the Kites project is coalescing a national constituency for prison reform as part of its highly interactive and interrelated web of video, radio, social media, and live theater offerings.
With a decade-long track record of “linking nonfiction film with cutting edge activism,” Working Films continues to construct collaborative media campaigns around films (Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, Two Towns of Jasper, Blue Vinyl, and many others) with a well-established partner network including distributors and social justice NGOs. In May, the North Carolina-based Working Films opened a London office in partnership with Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, an outgrowth of their success with several earlier collaborations.
These examples and innumerable others are pointing the way toward the “new normal” of collaboration as a core organizing principle for how we enact our media arts missions. As we navigate the era of “ridiculously simple group-forming” (to borrow a term from Clay Shirky in Here Comes Everybody), media arts organizations may be better positioned than others to survive the inevitable challenges associated with (quoting Shirky again) “the explosion of new groups pursuing new possibilities with new tools.” This advantage is not wholly attributable to comfort with media tools or past experiences with collaboration; it’s also a matter of perseverance in service of the big picture. In describing the philosophy and approach of QWOCMAP, Kebo Drew illustrates this point well. She explains, “We look at collaboration as a life or death issue in how we do our work and serve our community. Collaboration is not something we can drop because it’s too much work. In fact, even if we have difficult partners, we will still continue to build those relationships…If it takes a couple of years to make it happen, then QWOCMAP will continue to reach out, because on a larger level, those relationships are crucial to social justice.”
Cultivating a Network Mindset
Our habits of mind inform our behavior and our capacity to collaborate. Cultivating a “network mindset” is essential to having an impact and staying relevant, according to Forces for Good, a new study of successful nonprofits by Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant. They define the network mindset as a shift from competition to collaboration, from growing the organization to growing the network or field, from competing for scarce resources to growing the funding pie, and from acting alone to acting collectively—including sharing credit and power.
With a network mindset, are we better prepared to collaborate in an increasingly networked world? From the vantage point of the present, the scale and meaning of our networked world is hard to fathom. Yet important clues are emerging. In his latest book, Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken chronicles the world-changing power created by thousands of nonprofits—from tiny grassroots groups to large NGOs—as they have become more interconnected and collaborative across continents and previously separate social justice and environmental issue organizing. In what is perhaps the ultimate network mindset, Hawken posits that these groups, working together in a multitude of variations, collectively serve as a “global immune system” and are creating “a new curriculum for humankind… some of it corrective, some of it restorative, and some of it highly imaginative.” In a similar vein, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales describes Wikipedia as “self healing,” a reference to its robust system of continuous content generation and correction by a large cadre of volunteers; collectively this community keeps the whole project intact and in balance.
The Case for Collaboration
As we recognize our interdependence—from the local to the global—the successes, struggles and lessons learned through collaboration help us become more flexible, adaptive and effective, and perhaps also more awake, caring, and whole. When we become isolated in our work, we become irrelevant and less able to fulfill our social and cultural missions. When we collaborate on a regular basis, we discover new potentials beyond what we would have envisioned or accomplished on our own.
Summing up the case for collaboration eloquently, Michael Gilbert of The Gilbert Center says, “The less tightly we hold to our narrow organizational identities, because we have unpacked them in the process of collaborating, the sooner we will forge the movements and coalitions needed to truly save the world from the forces of fear and greed. Every step in that direction counts.”
We make the road by collaborating.
