Refresh Your Creativity Through Collaboration

Written by Guest Author: Tien Frogget

Is your art/ photography/ design/ writing (fill in the blank with any creative medium you like) getting to be a recycling of the same concepts and ideas? Are you looking for something to bump you out of the rut and into a new realm of creative projects? This creativity booster might be perfect for you.

Why not try teaming up with someone else to create something new?

Musical artists do it all the time. They are constantly teaming up with other singers and musicians to create new songs and fuse their styles and ideas together. They feature each other on their music albums and share the work with their fan bases and their listeners discover new musicians that they like. By teaming up, they bounce ideas off of each other and come up with things that they wouldn’t have otherwise come up with.

So why is it that artists don't usually like to team up? It seems like creating a painting or a photograph is often a solo endeavor – something that we tackle on our own. But imagine the possibilities if you decided to create something with another artist! It’s not something that you have to start doing all the time (unless of course you really like it) but it can be an excellent way to get fresh perspective and get your creativity flowing.

The person that you decide to collaborate with will have a completely different history, viewpoint, and way of thinking than you do. They will inevitably approach the project differently than you do, and take it in an unexpected direction, and you will do the same for them. If you can go with the flow and play off of each other, you might just create something completely unique! (Especially if you collaborate with someone who’s style of work is vastly different than your own.)

Image by Greg Schurman

It’s definitely worth giving a try – and if you find that you conflict with the person that you teamed up with, try someone else. It’s important to find someone that you work well with and you can both let go of the end result in order to just enjoy the process. The goal isn’t to create a masterpiece, it is to have fun and discover new ways of creating together, bouncing ideas off of one another and moving in new directions. (Although you might just end up creating a masterpiece anyway.)

Give it a try! What do you have to lose? And think of what you might create… !