Background Statement

Collaboration is something I have practiced and familiarised myself with as a Musical Director (MD), particularly through my experiences in my undergraduate degree. One of the most valuable collaborative experiences that I had was forming an artistic relationship with one of my closest friends at university. We had a combination of similar interests with different skill sets, allowing us to focus on our shared goal while using our individual strengths. We also learnt the correct way to separate our personal friendship from our professional relationship – ensuring we could be efficient and still enjoy our projects. The products of our collaboration included a community choir in Askham Grange women’s prison and a small creative workshop surrounding the correlation between art and music, both in which we organised together and co-facilitated. We collaborated on original compositions, accompanying the choir, organising rehearsals and repertoire and leading the groups.

Additionally, a collaborative experience that is perhaps most similar to the collaboration I will be practicing at Leeds Conservatoire was my role as MD and keys/conductor in my second year musical production, ‘Crybaby The Musical’. It was the first time I had taken a creative role like this rather than performing in the band or on stage. Therefore, I learnt how to work alongside the other creatives such as the director and choreographer to ensure clear communication. Unlike my previous example, this required me to work with a larger group of people who I was not familiar with. Our relationships remained professional, regularly discussing our plans and issues and I enjoyed having their support while working independently on the music. I don’t remember having any disagreements on the show as we were all mainly focusing on our respective areas and, as the show was a success, I believe that the collaborative process was too.

Though there are most likely more examples that I could mention, these are the two that have impacted how I view and embark on collaborative practice. These are also things I will refer back to when discussing my line of enquiry.

Line of Inquiry

I have been challenged in my first five weeks at Leeds Conservatoire by working closely with other disciplines and new people on projects that I ordinarily wouldn’t involve myself with. In the past, I have worked with mainly musicians on original compositions, and I have collaborated with directors and creatives on existing work. Therefore, I have never had experience of the latter – working amongst a combination of creative roles while creating a new piece of work. Because of this, I have witnessed that as an MD there are a lot of things I don’t feel confident or comfortable with doing, especially when faced with acting or writing tasks. I personally think that music is in a completely different realm to the other courses, whereas I believe that company, directing and dramaturgy have more overlapping skills and methods.

Therefore, I wanted to focus this portfolio on how compatible I am as an MD in comparison to the other creative roles when collaborating within a range of projects, and furthermore, explore how changes in the collaborative structure can impact this. I will be using Linda Candy’s chapter on reflective collaborative practice to centre my research, whilst also delving into other writers’ perspectives.

Documentation

29/09/25 – The First Collaboration

During this workshop, we worked as a group to show two pieces of work using organisational structures and working methods from Davis Robinson’s writing. For our first piece, we used the ‘assign roles’ method and created a minute-long monologue with movement to enhance the words. In the second piece we, experimented with balancing these roles through storytelling, using ‘yes, and…’ and ‘rotate leadership’. In order to do this, we took a piece of paper and passed it around the group, each of us adding the next word to the story until the time was up. This meant that we all had equal opportunity to contribute to the story and change the path it goes down.

30/09/25 – Cabaret Pitch

This project was a small group pitch during a New Work lab for which we were given the word ‘tomorrow’ as our only brief. We began our conversation about the pitch by brainstorming initial ideas surrounding the idea of ‘tomorrow’. All group members added unique ideas into the mix – most of them in harmony with their respective practices. We ended up deciding on a satirical cabaret exploring the idea of the future of the world and what it might look like. Once we finalised our theme, we all went away to use our separate skills to progress the project. I composed an obscured arrangement of ‘Tomorrow’ from Annie, while others created a collaborative mood board for the whole group to contribute with and additionally a synopsis of the idea as a whole. Once we came together to present it, the sum of our separate skills, effort and communication meant that our pitch was coherent and effective.

06/10/25 – Micro Workshops

For this task, we were put into a group of about seven students from a variety of courses and were told to each facilitate a 5-10 minute micro workshop. I chose to teach a short, 3-part song titled: ‘Ise Oluwa’. I felt that this call-and-response method was most reflective of my musical background. Other members of the group based their workshops around vocal warm ups, storytelling and recording. We all collaborated with the respective leaders by listening clearly and carrying out the tasks they required us to do, working in a controlled, collaborative environment.

Reflection/Analysis

I have noticed that as a musician, some of the collaborative tasks felt rather alien to me. For example, during the first collaboration between myself, Chris, Fanny and Chen, the working method we chose for the first task (‘assign roles’) was difficult for me to find a way to incorporate my skills. The other members of my group – MA company students – seemed to easily adapt to the other skills. Chris became the writer and within that role he also created the dramatic structure. Fanny and Chen became the choreographers and created the movement to pair alongside Chris’ monologue. As there were no instrumental or compositional roles to carry out in the 10 minutes we had, I ended up taking the role of ‘outside eye’. Although having an outside eye is important in projects, for the context of this task there wasn’t enough time for me to contribute any feedback and changes to the work. Therefore, my addition to the group felt ineffective. This was an eye-opening beginning to collaboration at Leeds Conservatoire, as although I was grateful to now have the opportunity to work alongside so many different creative roles, I realised I needed to adapt my own collaborative processes and expectations to ensure that I could work efficiently. In comparison, the other method we looked at (a combination of ‘yes, and…’ and ‘rotate leadership’) felt much more open to me as we could all pitch in. There was no performance involved and because we were each adding a word to the story at a time, it meant that I wasn’t pressured to write a whole passage myself. I found the task enjoyable and I thought it was accessible for any creative role.

A situation in which I had to devise new work with artists from different disciplines was our cabaret project pitch. Upon reflection, we used two types of collaborative techniques – a mixture of complementary and integrative collaboration “through our joint endeavour to think in far-reaching ways” (Candy, 2019:113). It was the integrative part of this, the initial discussions about the project theme, that I felt slightly unsure about contributing with. In my personal experience as an MD, I am used to being given existing material and using my musicianship skills to collaborate with the band, cast and creative team within a music capacity. In this project pitch, I was suddenly involved in contributing my ideas for topics that I was unaccustomed to, particularly regarding the theming and message of the show. I am not someone who is confident enough about my knowledge with setting up a structure or developing political themes for a show, so having such an open, collaborative conversation was rather daunting to me. I was afraid I would say the wrong thing, or that my ideas would not be received well. I noticed a similar situation in the micro-workshops, one of which was a storytelling workshop led by Jason. I think that the discussion was perfectly balanced and everyone was able to contribute, however, I personally struggled with the concept of confidently announcing my ideas. Perhaps this is due to the fact that this was not a music-based task, therefore, I felt unqualified to pitch my ideas to a group that contained creatives, actors and dramaturgs.

Having identified my problem with collaboration, I must work to find a resolution. After reading Linda Candy’s chapter, I have become aware of her different collaborative styles and I have already identified two in this portfolio that I have used during these first five weeks. However, I have also become intrigued by the two other practices that she mentions – family collaboration and distributed collaboration – and whether these will solve the issue that I have addressed. As I explained in my personal statement, I developed a close collaborative relationship during my undergraduate degree, and I also feel that I have developed a very similar relationship amongst the MA Musical Directors. I feel comfortable to rely on them and I understand the way that we all work together from the many projects that we have begun as a cohort. Candy describes family collaboration as an environment to “develop a unique culture to the group” (Candy, 2019:116), and I truly believe that we have created our own language and way of working together. It is for this reason that I believe establishing family collaboration with a mixture of creatives in a similar fashion to the relationship I have with the MDs, will build up my confidence to work on new projects. Having creatives that I am familiar with may help me to gauge the dynamic of the group and understand the way in which I can contribute productively and effectively. I also remain aware of the value of my collaborative relationships with the other MDs. Therefore, I would continue to continue use distributed collaboration among the MD cohort, so I can gain productive insight from people who understand my methods and processes whilst having an outside eye to the project and the members involved. John-Steiner explains that “trust between collaborators often contributes to the heightened self-confidence needed to overcome the weight of artistic traditions” (John-Steiner, 2000:79). I believe this resonates with how I felt in certain collaborative dynamics, as if the ‘tradition’ or methods of a contrasting creative role was discouraging me, as a musician, to voice my ideas. However, building a level of trust within a group that I am familiar working with may combat these feelings. After reflecting on my time at Leeds Conservatoire so far, I am now aware of the value of a close, collaborative group whom I trust. As a result, I believe that a mixture of family collaboration amongst creatives and distributed collaboration amongst MDs will provide a strong foundation to build my new experience of collaboration upon.

Conclusion

Having observed how I have collaborated over the past five weeks, I am now able to identify why I am hesitant to fully collaborate when faced with a group of different creative roles. Although I may be correct about my inexperience within some areas, I should not let this prevent me from voicing my ideas. In future, I must practice working with an established, familiar group of creatives to build up my confidence when voicing my opinions or ideas, using Candy’s family and distributed collaboration methods as a substructure. This will ideally support me enough to eventually utilise these same methods and skills within groups of complete strangers.

References

Robinson, D. (2017) A Practical Guide to Ensemble Devising [eBook]. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Candy, L. (2019) The Creative Reflective Practitioner: Research Through Making and Practice [eBook]. Routledge.

John-Steiner, V. (2000) Creative Collaboration [eBook]. Oxford University Press.