Introduction

You could feel the amicable energy flowing across the group in the lofted space on that sunny September afternoon. The planned weekend gathering had our collective of practitioners engaged in multiple activities on the upper floor of the Helmsdale museum, Timespan. There were gasps of interest, giggles with the clay from one table, clangs and banging from another, and the ever sigh of relief when the screen was lifted from the print and paint. Our group had come together from across the length and breadth of Scotland to meet for our second curated gathering. During this active afternoon, we discussed our respective practices—a weaver shared their design process, while ceramicists shared different ways of working with clay; each participant exploring, sensing, growing and feeling through the motions and movements of their respective craft (Figure 1).

In the first phase of the project, “Aural Textiles”, six textile practitioners were introduced to the process of visualising sounds and each created individual work inspired by self-selected sounds. In the second phase, “Distributed Capabilities”, the textile practitioners worked with five practitioners from different craft disciplines to share knowledge of the multi-sensory Aural Textiles process and co-create discipline-spanning objects (Figure 2). In this, the project questions existing ways of making and collaborating using digital/analogue avenues that augment, but do not replace, the influence and expertise of the practitioner on the design and creation process; promotes new hybrid ways of making and working within a twenty-first century context; and encourages conversations and knowledge-/skills-sharing between practitioners from different disciplines.

The Aural Textiles process established a baseline understanding of innovative practice at the intersections between analogue and digital processing, and traditional and contemporary craft. The process allowed practitioners to explore attunement to landscape within a context that was not bound to their existing disciplinary thinking and was intended to support their ability to cross interdisciplinary boundaries. Opportunities for interpretation and creative ownership were encouraged through the formation of partnerships between textile and non-textile practitioners that promoted sharing of the Aural Textiles process within their collaborations. This sharing process acted as a bridge between disciplines and between project phases. Using participatory design methods to enable practitioners to explore traditional and local knowledge in this way supports the harnessing of collective knowledge and novel collaboration. Reflective practice was prioritised during the gatherings to support active and contextual knowledge creation, primarily through tacit exploration and social interaction during group activities.

Co-design of the project between practitioners and researchers was embedded within the process through inclusive planning sessions and open-ended group discussions. This participatory design approach supports shared value creation and learning, and inclusive engagement, embedding the intended collaborative ethos. The value of designing for open-ended collaborative participation in this way connects everyone involved in the project to shared concepts, ‘unlocking, amplifying and analysing individual creative potential’. It is this idea of co-creation that is promoted throughout the project, especially in the formatting of this paper.

Setting up Collaborations

The practitioners from the first phase of the project were introduced to the Aural Textiles process, in which they could independently develop textile patterns relevant to their own specific disciplines. By framing sound capturing and spectrogram processing as the context from which to innovate from, practitioners were allowed to delve into the complexity of sound and “take a step back” from their professional perspectives, creating ‘themes that are neutral, in the sense that they don’t presuppose a discipline’. This allowed the practitioners an established process from which to ‘see’ the translation of sound into a tactile form.

Knowledge Transfer

Various show and tell-based activities were scattered across the three gatherings of Distributed Capabilities, which acted as spaces for wider sharing within the collective of experiences, expertise, emerging processes, and shared meaning between the partnerships. The partnerships were encouraged to agree their own rhythms and rituals for collaborating in-between the gatherings, supported by the researchers who provided a blog space and website, and a WhatsApp group initiated by the practitioners, in which the researchers were included.

Laura (a ceramicist) reflects on her collaboration with Beth (screen printer):

‘Being selected to be part of the second phase of participants within the project has meant so much to me. To be involved in an initiative that has challenged my own practice, introduced me to the process of collaboration, and acquainted me with such a creative and welcoming group of practitioners has been inspiring, uplifting and rewarding.’

‘I met my fellow collaborator, Beth during our initial meeting in Huntly. It was through an ice-breaker task that took a ‘speed dating’ format, where all the participants were given a few minutes to chat and give a brief overview of who we were, that Beth and I connected due to our mutual love of surface pattern. Initially, I thought that we were going to be paired up with collaborative partners in advance, however this organic approach allowed us to ‘suss’ each other out and naturally find a common creative connection. I believe that if we had been paired up in advance of course we could have worked with our assigned partners, but this more organic approach to finding a collaborative partner has worked out well for Beth and I.’

‘During our initial meet-up back in Glasgow, Beth and I discussed several possible ideas that we could develop for our collaborative piece. As Beth was part of the original six participants, she brought knowledge and experience of the project that gave me confidence to suggest several options. We agreed on using sounds from our practice as our starting point. Recording sounds from equipment we use in our practice gave us a focus and enabled us to discuss and learn about each other’s working methods. We felt that the ‘sounds of our practice’ theme was accessible for all the participants in our group and so, for our project submission, it has been easy to receive data via email from the other members of the group (Figure 5). This data has given us an insight into the environments we all work in and allowed us to continue with our idea, even through the restrictions of Covid.’

‘In contrast my collaboration with Olive has taken us both off on completely different creative paths to those we normally take, and we have experimented with new materials, processes and shapes. We have gone through many possibilities before finding something we both feel excited to pursue, and the process of creative play has been as important to us as the resolution. The sound we have used for inspiration is our own laughter, recorded as we have talked and imagined a wealth of possibilities (Figure 8). Working with Olive has been fun, comforting and enriching, and our ongoing communication has been important to both of us throughout lockdown. We have discovered our shared purpose is to celebrate and express joy.’

‘Reflecting on these two collaborations I see that they have each fed a different part of my practice and enabled it to evolve. The work I have been doing over the last eight years in exploring loss, and specifically dementia, has been very personal and I have been driven to make so that I can process and deal with grief. Working with Dwynwen has provided a bridge into a completely new body of work on this familiar theme, while my collaboration with Olive has encouraged me to work with the completely opposite emotional range to express joy and celebration. These two apparently opposite sides to my practice are both still important to me, and I now have much greater clarity over how I bring them both into one unified practice.’

‘My third collaboration has only just begun, although Marie and I have been talking sporadically since the project began as we have slowly searched for our shared purpose - to draw attention to the fragility of our natural environment. Due to lockdown our access to materials and equipment has been restricted, but this has had the positive effect of forcing us to reign in the ambition of our ideas and focus on what can realistically be achieved. We have not been able to meet in person to develop our experiments, and this has limited our skill sharing opportunities and experience of one another’s materials. However, we are determined, and will be using our digital connections to direct one another through remote ways of working.’

‘Reflecting on the way the DC project has evolved, I believe that all successful collaborations must have these three sets of parameters. Practitioners all crave supported time for creative experimentation to reinvigorate and refuel their practice. But they also need a set of project themes or topics to work with, or even against, as subverting the rules of engagement can also generate interesting results. However, it is the timeline that is vital in converting the experimentation into tangible outcomes. Creative play has never been more important than now as we all seek to rethink our professional lives due to the Covid-19 pandemic. But we also need the certainty of deadlines and agreed outputs on which to focus our creative endeavours. And accountability to my fellow collaborators continues to give me energy and reminds me of our shared purpose.’

These examples of multiple cross-disciplinary collaboration demonstrate collective development of new processes, practices, artefacts and products, arguably supported by the designed activities. As demonstrated by Carol’s new understanding of how to unite two sides of her work into ‘one unified practice’, the development of expertise and meaning within personal practice can also be identified as a result of participating within a wider collective.

Evolving ecologies of practice

We set out in this paper to explore collective, cross-disciplinary creative collaboration through the experiences of project participants. We consider that the collaborations between participants have evolved into an ‘ecology of practice’, which can be defined: ‘the catalyst and intention of groups of individuals coming together to design together varies from a desire for community, economic necessity and/or political intent.’ Enabling knowledge sharing between the partnerships during the gatherings, and providing digital platforms for wider-group conversation beyond these, contributed to novel organic collaborations and the formation of a wider collective of practice. Within Vaughan’s definition of collective, it is the ‘many points of interconnection and the co-production of ideas, products or actions’ that defines an ‘ecology’ of practice, beyond collaborations or collectives. Ecologies of practice in this study are where interdisciplinary making, learning, and influence arise from direct participation in activities, conversations, and reflections that support the sharing of experiences, expertise, and meaning (Figure 8). These social learning systems play a key role within the creation and production of new tools, methods, artefacts, and products.

Common Themes

A number of themes were found across the practitioners’ reflections that offer insights into the ecology of practice. The practitioners identified three key areas of transition between individual and collaborative practice: experimentation, shared values, and digital/analogue communication.

Firstly, taking part in this collective and collaborative research project offered the practitioners the opportunity for creative exploration underpinned by peer support and accountability to their partners and the collective community. Creative exploration and experimentation are often ‘unpaid’ activities and can be difficult to prioritise for makers with a solo practice, whose income is typically generated across a portfolio of work that can include making for wholesale and direct-to-consumer sales, teaching (of their craft, of art/design/making more generally or business support), and/or separate paid employment that may or may not be directly related to their practice: ‘With many activities competing for time in my practice, experimentation is always the first thing to be dropped’ (Carol). Being able to experiment and explore within the context of both collaboration(s) and collective offered practitioners’ multiple structures (or ecosystems) of both accountability and peer support that required and encouraged them to prioritise experimentation and exploration. This reinforces shared experience as one component of the ecology of practice.

Secondly, the identification of shared values was important for successful collaborations. Most (if not all) practitioners in this project define overall ‘success’ as engaging with a collaboration underpinned by a shared sound-inspired design process that allows space for creative exploration with a shared goal of co-creating work for exhibition: ‘Recording sounds from equipment we use in our practice gave us a focus and enabled us to discuss and learn about each other’s working methods’ (Laura). The method(s) applied by each collaborative pairing to achieve that success has been different, but all depend on four components:

• Sharing knowledge of the underpinning process

• Trusting in the discipline-specific and general designer/maker expertise of collaborative partners

• Spending time with partners to understand shared interests

• Committing to partnership-authored programmes of work.

Both partners wanting the same thing from the collaboration was also key, whether that was about exploring a shared concept in a new way (such as the expression of loss by Carol and Dwynwen), testing methodologies across disciplines (surface pattern design for Laura and Beth), or a shared desire to push at the technical edges of what their particular disciplines could achieve (Cally and Jen). None of these factors are unique to craft or design collaborations, but the examples here demonstrate the diverse ways in which the identification of shared values can influence the collaborative direction, and chime perfectly with the shared (distributed) expertise and shared meaning components in an ecology of practice.

Third, was the juxtaposition of physical versus digital interactions. Digital technologies have supported collective endeavour throughout this project and are a crucial component of this ecology of practice. They have been necessary for the data-inspired design process, as a platform for sharing knowledge across geographic distances and, crucially, as a means of remaining connected to each other throughout the period of physical distancing imposed during the global response to Covid-19. These digital interactions served important purposes of knowledge acquisition and sharing as well as peer support, but have always been aligned with in-person gatherings and collaborative meetups. Digital technologies have never completely replaced the physical interactions with objects and techniques that are fundamental to the experience of craft and making and for building trust and mutual respect: ‘Although the online meetings allowed us to keep some sort of momentum within our project, seeing someone face to (socially distanced) face has been much more impactful’ (Laura).

Thinking of how ecologies of practice might need to adapt in response to longer-term needs for physical distancing, it is not yet clear how the process of establishing trusted relationships and sharing tactile aspects of craft practice could be translated to a digital-only environment. Cally provides a critical perspective on digital collaboration:

‘I have mixed feelings about digital collaboration. I’m grateful that the technology exists to allow us to keep meeting and sharing work, but I don’t find it as engaging and compelling as working together in person. As far as tools are concerned, I’ve benefited enormously from many platforms which offer free services, but I’m also aware of the limitations of ‘free’ and of leaving a trail of once-tried-never-adopted accounts littered across the internet. As makers we aren’t necessarily aware of what is available, and the suggestions I’ve found most useful have come from people in completely unrelated fields but who are accustomed to working and sharing resources online, e.g. in software development. How can we tap into this knowledge across disciplinary boundaries?’

As recognised by the practitioners in this group and our extended maker networks, practitioner-led explorations of immersive digital technologies are now needed in order to support collaboration over distance (short and long), skills sharing, and user engagement with the process of making and with the objects created. In particular, there is a desire to understand the ways in which digital interactions can provide unique object- and process-embedded experiences, over and above simply seeking to recreate that which is missing from physical interactions. As we write, work to address this is about to launch with makers in Scotland, and will build on experiences from museum and heritage communities where rare and fragile objects/places and poorly understood processes cannot be handled. The results from this new work will complement the findings described here and will also feed into the final presentation of outcomes from this project.

Towards Dynamic Digital/Analogue Ecologies

More widely, we discussed the concept of this project as an ecology or ecosystem of practice. In the unusual circumstances that Covid-19 created, many participants needed to withdraw their time from this project to focus on rethinking their rhythms as normal revenue streams and activities suddenly disappeared and the way we live our lives changed dramatically: ‘With events and workshops cancelled, and retailers shutting their doors, we were needing to reinvent ourselves on the fly’ (Cally) and ‘The Covid-19 pandemic temporarily removed the DC timeline, resulting in all of my collaborative activity being put on hold while I prioritised my personal and professional needs’ (Carol).

Despite the reduction in time available to create work as part of the collaborations, the collective still supported participants to sustain creative threads throughout this period of transition. This occurred through peer support at informal weekly creative coffee breaks organised by the researchers as well as through shared purpose and accountability: ‘Not only did we join the group wide Zoom meetings with the rest of the Aural Textile participants, we also conducted our own. We shared ideas about the project, showed examples of pieces we were working on and continued our collaborative friendship, but just on a different platform’ (Laura). A sustained focus, in terms of continuing to create work for presentation, also helped to maintain a link across pre-, peri- and, we hope, post-Covid ways of being.