*“As a lab we have always prioritised and invested our energy in building relationships and network weaving. Our principles ‘connections matter’ and ‘move at the speed of trust’ have helped us hold this focus upon a quality of relationships rooted in trust, care, respect, abundance and reciprocity.
Shallow and transactional relationships, (commonplace on high streets up and down the country) won’t support the emergence of a culture that makes a kinder, more connected and creative High Street in Dudley possible.
As we nurture and build connections with people we trust to become partners in this work the Imagination Sundial helps us root that partnership in the conditions for meeting imagination halfway to enable action. This framing helps orientate those relationships and who is drawn to this work” ~* CoLab Dudley Team
Having spent 5 years establishing a social lab and creative participatory platform on Dudley High Street we have lots of learning about what effective and meaningful collaboration in relation to our work involves.
As we embark on new adventures with peers, colleagues and communities across the borough we thought it would be helpful to communicate what collaboration with CoLab Dudley will look like. (And at the same time remind ourselves what know from experience helps great collaboration to flourish.) Not all of our collaboration will be in relationship with Dudley High Street, but we will pay attention to place in all our collaborations.
Not every relationship we enter into will be a collaborative one. At the end of a great thread on learning about collaboration Nour Sidawi calls to attention the need to distinguish between coordination (requirement to communicate), cooperation (need to align), and collaboration (shared goals, risks).
Enabling alternative just futures for Dudley borough requires collective imagining. For this reason we centre the conditions for imagination in all our relationships, and especially in our collaborations.
This guide to collaboration is rooted in practical experience, and importantly is focused on ways we will share responsibility to tend to a relationship that helps catalyse imagination into action.
Inspired by our use of the Imagination Sundial (pictured), this guide has 3 sections:
The Imagination Sundial, by Rob Shorter
We explicitly prioritise creating the mental and emotional space to expand our collective capacity to imagine new futures. This means collaborating with us WILL involve:
Let’s agree together what that looks like and feels like. We will ensure we check-in regularly with you to tend to and care for the relationship.
We will commit to creating collaboration space and time for meaningful connections centred upon feeling safe, welcome and valued.
Our ways of working are rooted in a ‘Do It Together’ culture. That means a collective permission to experiment, co-create, share learning, embracing unexpected opportunities, testing out new ways of exploring and relating to the High Street in all its potential. We will commit to designing flexibility into our shared endeavour in order to create space for this experimenting, sharing, and collaboration. We are curious about your values and ways that they translate into ways of being and practices.
... of ideas, deep listening and co-design. Working together will involve deep listening, creative and thoughtful responses, and generous sharing of related ideas and learning resources.
We will be fostering a genuine feeling of permission/ invitation to add ideas, resources, make connections, show gratitude and share ‘mistakes’ or discarded ideas as part of the creative process.
We will ensure reflective learning time is designed into the work enabling deeper connection and empathy between the space, people, and other beings.
So we carve out space for personal connection/ stories and then weaving collective storytelling through the collaboration. The Time Rebel framing allows room for a range of levels of activity and connection to the work but also makes collaborators feel part of something bigger from the start. How might we do that in a meaningful way with you?
