“I always find that if two (or more) of us throw ideas backwards and forwards I get to more interesting and original places than I could have ever have gotten to on my own” (Cleese, John 1991 A lecture on creativity, https://vimeo.com/18913413 –  27:20mins).

Collaboration is a centric element in developing and reevaluating the quality of any project. Having undertaken many group based tasks already in our classes through the semester thus far, it has been evident to me the extent of how much an idea can develop and change when multiple parties are contributing. The key example from this semester thus far being our single shot narratives completed in Week 2. With the time constraint of an hour to conceive and execute our idea, my group consisting of Ella, Andrew and I began walking around the northern side of the campus in search for visual prompts or inspiration to spark an idea. Initially we planned on creating a sketch based vignette of a teacher and student where the student was the only member of the class to show up and the teacher. Based on time and visual constraints this seemed to be an easy achievement however given the extroverted nature of all of our group members we found no issue in elevating the situation further and further, proposing that “the teacher isn’t even there” , or that “the student and teacher are in different classrooms and we mislead the viewers through changing context”. This environment of us spitballing ideas created a formulation process which retrospectively after we concluded on our final idea it was completely foreign to what we initially had.

Relating this back to John Cleese’s quote from “A lecture on creativity”, it is undeniable that everyone has their own ideas and styles but through amalgamating many parties ideas together, or using multiple people/groups to help develop or create something there is a level of mutative originality that cannot be conceived by any one member on their own. In the case of our project “The Emergency”, I believe that each one of our members  retained some elements of their own originally conceived ideas but they amalgamated with others to produce the final project. Thankfully this all appeared to be quite an organic process with no unsatisfactory compromises which can be a potentially detrimental occurrence in group tasks.

Applying Cleese’s notion of creativity through collaboration, I will actively seek peer reviews and advice moving forward into the semester as even in individual assignments Cleese’s quote holds merit as even things as simple as constructive criticism or ways of improving upon an existing idea to open pathways otherwise obstructed to any one author of a creative work.

I conclude by providing another John Cleese presentation on Collaborative Synergies. While this piece focusing more directly on Business and Marketing based work, it explores the notion of collaboration further through exploring inefficiencies and redundancies in collaborative projects should members be working simultaneously on different areas without contact, a key area of collaboration that can hinder the potential of projects.

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