AV Festival (AV) Northern Lights Film Festival

(NLFF) and Tyneside Cinema (TC)

Making the case for Disciplined Collaboration

Introduction

One of the most simple and powerful frameworks for working out how to
achieve successful collaborative working is Morten Hansen’s idea of
‘disciplined collaboration’ which he sums up as follows: the leadership
practice of properly assessing when to collaborate (and when not to) and
instilling in people both the willingness and the ability to collaborate when
required.

His solution to achieving disciplined collaboration is to pursue the following

three steps:

Step 1: Evaluating opportunities for collaboration

Step 2. Spot Barriers to collaboration
Step 3. Tailor solutions to tear down the barriers

This case story has been written using Hansen’s simple framework to
illuminate the challenges this group faced as they embarked on their
collaboration. It aims to underline how paying serious attention to these three
stages offers collaborative endeavour a better chance of succeeding. By
explaining the difficulties faced by this group in each of these stages, we hope
to share valuable learning with other embarking on similar journeys.

Background to the organisations

All three organisations (two festivals, one cinema) are based in the TC
building (AV and NLFF as tenants of TC). At the start of this pilot, TC
provided financial services to both festivals.

AV is a bi-annual festival that was initially established and delivered by TC.

The second festival was delivered by a partnership that included TC, and then
in 2007 AVANE1 was formally constituted as an independent charitable
company. The festival has been led by an artistic director since 2004 and
Rebecca Shatwell was appointed to this role in September 2008. Prior to
becoming a tenant of TC, AV was supported by the TC, through subsidised
rent and IT systems. In July 2009 at the outset of this collaboration, AV had
just completed its first three-year business plan, and recruited a new team of
staff and contractors to deliver the 2010 festival.

TC had been in its new building for one year when this collaboration began
and had delivered a series of projects (including digital arts commissioning)
                                                                                                               
1 Audio Visual Arts North East
 
alongside its core cinema activity in this time. In the summer of 2009 TC was
in the process of revisiting its five-year business plan. Its first year trading in
the
new building had exceeded budget target (i.e. has created a smaller deficit
than predicted). TC had created many fixed term posts to ‘open’ the new
building and the business plan had always showed a reduction in its
management costs in 2010/2011 to increase profitability. For this reason,
several key contracts ended in Autumn 2009.

NLFF is an annual film festival, which historically took place in Newcastle

each November. NLFF was always more independent from TC than AV, but
was delivered through the venue. A new director was employed in 2008,
however after a period of external independent consultation, the director and
programme assistant resigned in June 2009. Consequently it was decided that
the next festival would take place at the end of the financial year (end March
2010) immediately following the 2010 AV Festival. At the start of the MMM
collaboration there was no director in place.

Focus of the collaboration

These three organisations proposed collaborating in two distinct areas

a) sharing a range of back-office functions, and
b) developing a more collaborative approach to programming and public
engagement.

Taking account of the unexpected

Whilst it may be self-evident that for collaborations to succeed the partners

involved need a degree of operational stability from the outset, it is also the
case that collaborations are sometimes forced into life as a result of some kind
of internal or external operational challenge or find themselves unexpectedly
facing a difficult situation, often catalysed by personnel and/or financial
issues. The AV, NLFF and TC group fell into the latter category and their
navigation of their predicament formed an important backdrop to this
collaboration story.

As outlined above, the key event in the first few months of this pilot was the
significant organisational change undergone by NLFF, namely the resignation
of key staff and a re-structure and considerable re- evaluation of the core aims
of the festival. This included a period of uncertainty, followed by the
appointment of a new director partway through this collaboration, and the re-
scheduling of the festival. The consequences were significant:

Firstly, the time available to deliver the MMM pilot project became truncated,
effectively running for one year (summer 2009 – summer 2010) instead of the
planned two years.

Secondly, the dynamics of this collaboration necessarily changed. Of the two

festivals (the smaller organisations in the mix), one had to focus on self-
preservation at a critical moment of flux2, whilst the other had a new director
in post needing to produce an impactful first festival.

Thirdly, whilst the three organisations had a history of collaboration, previous

collaborations had been dependant on an entirely different configuration of
personnel.

All three of these new realities meant that the collaboration began under
exceptionally complicated and unexpected circumstances

Summary of outputs and outcomes

There were certainly some successful collaborative outputs (both artistic and
back-office), including:

The complete production of two new artistic commissions

(‘Heliocentric’, a moving-image work by semiconductor, presented at AV
Festival; and ‘Feral Trade Café’, a creative collaboration fostered between
TC and AV which involved placing an artist in the context of the TC’s
catering operation to look at issues of sustainability).

A further artistic production (by Martin Hampton) was developed as part

of a collaboration between TC and NLFF. This output was less concrete
than the other productions, being a work-in- progress rather than a
completed work.

In relation to back-office outputs - a shared documentation contract was

developed between NLFF and AV10, which worked well as a one-off
contract with short-term benefit.

Whilst the relationship between each member of the group was not
fundamentally different at the end of the process than it had been at the start,
the collaborative process did generate some key outcomes;

‘Feral Trade’ in particular generated a good level of staff involvement,

meaning the MMM collaboration extended beyond the leaders of AV and
TC and permeated all levels of each company.

The process of collaborating on a range of artistic commissions led to

each organisation understanding more about the other. All partners
considered this action-based learning important.

A significant opportunity identified by all three organisations was the

opportunity to experiment in collaborating as a consequence of this pilot.
Not having to immediately deliver outputs was useful.

                                                                                                               
2In fact, throughout this pilot project, the principal point of contact at
NLFF changed three times, which arguably had a de-­‐stabilising effect on the
process as relationships built up had to repeatedly be re-­‐developed.
 
Although there has been no long-term collaborative relationship borne of this
project, there is now an incidental person-to-person relationship, beneficial in
terms of providing a sounding board, arena for sharing experiences etc,
between the two festivals where previously there had been none.

The collaborations enabled incidental shared learning – in relation to

developing works with artists, managing creative and production
relationships, and specifically beginning to develop an understanding of how
to monetize creative output – each organization is now looking to develop
contracts and models of working that better provide for long-term
recoupment of investment etc.

Following self- evaluation of the collaboration, one participant commented

that they have ‘more confidence in [themselves] as an organisation, as a result
of the MMM pilot’. Being allowed to experiment and learn as part of the
collaborative journey was crucial for all three organisations.

Significantly, having had the MMM experience and upon drawing conclusions
as to the project’s successes and failures, the three parties were able to have
their most frank and open discussion of the entire collaboration. This would
seem to evidence the MMM conclusions that genuine collaborations need
time to ferment before they grow, but further, one could also speculate that
each of the members involved in this initiative is probably now genuinely
more collaboration-ready, provided the context and partners were
appropriate.

Interestingly some of the achievements brought about by this collaborative

project involved clarifying and separating services and roles, this included
clarifying SLAs where they exist and also changes, particularly in relation to
AV, at board level to reduce conflicts of interest.

The collaborative process however itself was not at all times successful. By
considering Morten Hansen’s Three Steps of Disciplined Collaboration,
coupled with some of MMM’s findings in the light of this pilot initiative, it is
possible to identify pitfalls and consider some lessons learnt as a result of this
particular collaboration.

Considering this collaboration against Hansen’s Three Steps,

The overall learning to be gleaned from this case story is that before it
commences, any potential collaboration should be thoroughly assessed, in
terms of the motivations behind it and its appropriateness. A collaboration is
unlikely to succeed if it is based on assumptions, if all partners do not have
equality and if the partners are not aware of (or do not have the capacity to
overcome) likely barriers. By referring to MMM’s ‘Diagnostic Framework for
Assessing Healthy Collaboration’ alongside Hansen’s Three Steps, a number
of key lessons borne of this collaboration can be identified.3

                                                                                                               
3  It  should  be  noted  however,  hat  this  framework  was  not  made  available  to  this  groups  whilst  

undergoing  their  collaboration  –  had  such  a  methodology  been  suggested,  the  group  would  have  
endeavoured  to  follow  it.    
Step 1: Evaluating opportunities for collaboration

The Opportunities
The group felt that two sets of collaborative opportunities presented
themselves:
a) sharing back-office function
Consolidating shared back office functions in relation to volunteers,
fundraising and finance. This felt a natural progression given that the TC
already provided financial services to each festival, and the organisations had
a shared history of working with volunteers.4

b) artistic programme and public engagement

The organisations were keen that their collaboration moved beyond these
back-office service-based opportunities and agreed that in addition they
wanted to work towards the more ambitious goal of
evolving a collective vision and activities in relation to artistic programming
and public engagement.

Key learning: Establish levels of experience in collaborative

working.
A history of collaboration led to a shared assumption that working
collaboratively to programme work and engage with audiences would be a
natural evolution of the three organisations’ collective mission. The history
of organisational collaborative working in itself was not enough however;

The key building blocks from which it was presumed the organisations could
construct their collaboration
• the three organisations operate from the same building
• they have a shared genesis (both festivals were essentially incubated via
the creative programming of the cinema before becoming independent)
• their key personnel professionally cross-fertilise (at one point, the key
contacts from both NLFF and TC sat on the board of AV, and the CEO
of TC was additionally on the board of NLFF5)
• each festival had a history of presenting work at the cinema, and the
cinema considered the delivery of each festival as key to it’s own artistic
programming/output
• each organisation has broadly similar creative interests; film, moving
image, digital media, audiences
• At the point of application to MMM there were some existing shared
back-office relationships, and as highlighted earlier, all three
organisations had previously collaborated on a volunteer scheme.

Whilst this appeared to be a solid base upon which to further develop

collaborative working, the opportunities and framework for collaboration
were assumed rather than thoroughly analysed, based on the experience of
effectively a different (historic) configuration of organisations.

                                                                                                               
4  ‘Evolve’  was  a  volunteer  initiative  that  ran  across  all  three  organizations  and  was  one  of  a  

number  of  initiatives  where  fundraising  hand  been  managed  jointly.  

5  Roles  and  cross  over  had  changed  throughout,  partly  due  to  the  MMM  collaboration.  
Had the group followed Hansen’s Three Steps, they would have distinguished
previous iterations of each company, from their current incarnation (with new
leaders, different focuses and operating in a different climate). An audit of
previous collaborations themselves would have been informative, but would
still not have presented a fully effective road map for this configuration of
individuals, all of whom had differing (and developing) Competencies,
Qualities and Attributes(CQAs) (see Step 3).

Key learning– establish the relevance of the collaborative working

proposition
Given that two of the three organisations were ‘finding their feet’ individually
(identifying new missions, developing new business plans, each director
planning their first programme of work in post etc), and the third organization
(TC) was re-visiting its business plan, it became apparent that identifying a
shared or collective mission was going to be difficult, and arguably not timely.

So the group didn’t know how the collaboration would or might result in the
realisation of a developed collective vision, as the individual visions
themselves were still taking shape. With a new director in post at each festival
(and by this time a restructure also taking place at the cinema), the
organisations were not so much at risk of becoming rigid in the sense of not
adapting (as argued in the MMM report, ‘Fuelling the Necessary Revolution’)
but were keen to each forge their own way and create new individual identities
and as such were wary of compromising themselves in the pursuit of this.

Considerable discussion relating to governance issues concerning all three

companies took place, including the mooted suggestion of forming a parent
company to oversee all three organisations, however this created discomfort
within the group and eventually was not pursued, although governance
options have been logged as an area for future consideration amongst all the
organisations.

In terms of back-office function, by the time this group really embarked on

this collaborative pilot, each festival had independently made some moves to
separate certain back-office functions and resources that had previously been
shared with or provided by the cinema (AV in terms of IT systems and NLFF
in relation to finance).

In retrospect the question to ask here would have been are these the right
collaborative partners in this context? Despite their shared history, by the
end of the pilot, the organisations concluded that they whilst they have
existing important and durable long-term alliances (borne both through
historical association, but crucially through successful new working models in
2010), they weren’t necessarily the ideal combination of organisations to work
collaboratively on this initiative.6

                                                                                                               
6  Speculating  that  more  beneficial  collaborations  cold  be  forged  nationally  and  internationally,  

where  there  would  be  a  greater  degree  of  shared  creative  alignment  and  less  competition  sue  to  
not  being  so  proximate  in  terms  of  geography  or  scheduling  
Given that this crucial question wasn’t asked at this stage, the organisations
decided to work together on three creative collaborations with the aim of
learning by doing and assessing the collaborations (and future opportunities)
as they developed.

The most relevant opportunity to collaborate in terms of shared services arose

part-way through this pilot; two of the three organisations (the festivals)
collaborated on recruiting and engaging individuals to document each festival,
which was both a time- and cost-efficient use of resources (but which
generated differing levels of success for each festival due to differences in
briefing and on-the-job management). This joint need would probably not
have been identified had the organisations not already been working together
through this MMM initiative.

Step 2. Spot Barriers to collaboration

The Barriers

Having embarked on a collaborative journey, it became apparent that the

seeming commonalities could in fact equally be seen as hindrances or barriers.
Each organisation was close in terms of art form (in the broadest sense) and
location, yet it became apparent that they were in many ways distant from
each other in terms of ‘ways into’ understanding each other. This was one
significant barrier, another being a difficulty in navigating the line between
collaborating and competing.

Key learning- Demonstrate levels of self-knowledge in relation to

collaborative working
As already mentioned, the group did not have a genuinely clear sense of
lessons learnt from previous collaborations. In terms of CQAs, each
organisation was represented by one individual7 each of whom had
considerable professional knowledge and experience, but issues quickly came
to the fore in relation to differing levels of experience in different areas,
creating both feelings of vulnerability and inequality amongst members.
Although the three individuals hadn’t directly collaborated as representatives
of each organisation previously, each knew the others professionally and
personally – so came to this project with certain pre-conceptions, some of
which were challenged, some of which no doubt coloured the experience. A
further barrier could have been identified as an unlevel playing field -
meaning that there were issues of perceived hierarchy between three
companies; TC was not only a considerably larger organisation, it had existed
for the longest, had essentially formed the other two organizations and was
the only organisation which had personnel continuity connecting previous
collaborations to this initiative. This issue was never fully and openly
addressed.

Key learning- identify behavioural, organisational and/or practical barriers

Early on, the group identified that a principal barrier (for the two festivals in
                                                                                                               
7  CEO,  Director  and  Consultant  who  then  handed  over  to    new  Director,  followed  by  another  

consultant  brought  on  board  after  the  festival.  

particular) would be in constantly negotiating the balance between
collaboration and competition. This challenge became heightened due to the
rescheduling of one festival to take place immediately after the other, in the
same city, in the same building(s) and with some of the same external
partners. Discussions of collaboration turned to fears of brand-dilution, and
another imbalance appeared as the better resourced and arguably more stable
festival felt it potentially had more to lose than gain in terms of an association
with a less-stable counterpart. There was insufficient shared history at an
individual/leadership level to overcome this fear coupled with NLFF having
no creative lead for a period of time, and then a leader with insufficient
capacity to pick up the lead.

The crossover of personnel (in terms of governance and line management,

arguably a conflict of interests) was also a barrier to collaboration, although
this was only partially acknowledged.

The identification of these barriers highlights that the reasons for

collaboration and an ability to undertake it had been assumed rather than
rigorously interrogated. Had such an interrogation taken place, it is likely that
collaboration between these three organisations may not have been pursued,
certainly not in the expectation of producing a result within the remaining
timeframe for the pilot.

Key learning- Identify resourcing needs including early stage TA

needs
There was a genuine understanding from all parties that they would each need
to release time, energy, and financial resources to truly move a collaboration
forward, yet each organisation (and the two festivals in particular) were ‘up
against’ their own schedules, and would have had insufficient human
resources to engage with this experimental process if MMM had not
supported this collaboration. ‘Fuelling the Necessary Revolution’ identifies
some difficulties experienced by larger organisations in relation to
collaborative working, but it is important too to acknowledge that leaders of
small organisations are similarly stretched, often being expected to have
specialist skills across a variety of areas ranging from artistic programme to
company strategy. This group was divided in the early stages over the value of
developing certain soft-skills, and this early stage indecision was subsequently
parked as each member focused instead on the creative collaborations.

From ‘Fuelling the Necessary Revolution’:

“…underestimating the difficulties of learning amongst what may often be

highly diverse groups. Even if people recognise that they need to learn
together, they frequently avoid exploring difficult subjects because they
want to avoid conflict. They know that trust is important but they often lack
reliable strategies for building it. They may say they want to work
collaboratively across boundaries, but ultimately self-interest and vested
interests prevail.”

The group engaged an independent project manager to steer the collaborative

pilot, reflect on members’ progress and provide impartial views and guidance.
Further technical assistance was not brought in until towards the end of the
project – each festival director felt they needed to deliver one edition of
their respective Festivals to identify their own needs before enabling them to
establish what specific technical assistance might be required collectively.
This TA worked effectively, and had more time been available it would no
doubt have been useful to receive further assistance in the light of lessons
learnt throughout this process.

Step 3. Tailor solutions to tear down the barriers

Key learning– Clarify the shared vision

An early failure in this collaboration was in not evaluating each organisations’
aim relating to the overall collaboration and relying too much on assumptions
about collaboration in the early stages. However rather than thrashing out
these differences, through discussion the three organisations eventually hit
upon one aim they all had in common; namely to be involved in the creative
production of new works by artists/filmmakers for presentation to audiences.
Clear objectives and a timeframe were agreed and put in-place although
working methodologies were presumed rather than articulated.

This shared activity became the focus of the members, aiming to both generate
outcomes and develop learning along the way. The members worked together
(with varying degrees of success) to generate works as agreed, with overall
positive outcomes. This process was intended to enable the group to learn
together and from each other – so rather than developing CQAs and then
putting these into practice, the group chose instead to play to members’
existing strengths, with the hope that this would highlight areas for
development. Indeed the group ‘got on’ with the practice and learnt some
interesting lessons along the way;

Summary of key lessons learnt/observations made throughout this

pilot
A key factor in relation to a successful collaboration is clearly understanding
the dynamic at play – between the collaborating organisations but also,
crucially of the individuals leading the collaborations.

Had there been more equality of experience/confidence from each

organisation/individual in this case story, there might have been more
openness to learning and specifically to sharing.

From the outset, this group had been in reactive problem-solving mode,
working to get a ‘job done’ rather than truly having the time and space to
enter into collaborative working and it became apparent throughout the
process that each individual had a different understanding or expectation of
what collaboration means, meant, or could offer.

This pilot demonstrated the need to have consistency of contact – in terms of

regular meetings, but also in terms of consistency of personnel – for a point of
contact to change mid-relationship is disconcerting and destabilizing.
It is crucial to ensure there is a fully thought-through reason for collaborating
and that the partners are the right ones. This group should have spent more
time on preparation. An in-depth analysis would have demonstrated that this
configuration of organisations was not the ideal collaborative base.

Organisations should not assume a special relationship based on historical

legacy, but instead should seek to either develop relationships with a broad
range of partners, or work towards longer-term collaborations with carefully
selected associates.