Had a really interesting evening at the at abrahams event hosted by Arup on the theme of “collaborleaders”. at abrahams is curated by abrahams and Claire Curtice Publicists with this event chaired by Sophie Howarth from the School of Life. The evening highlights were Philip Sheppard playing an impromptu cello solo and then later joining Steve Lodder and John Etheridge to show how three musicians can come together and improvise a piece of music – collaboration at its best. The video below is a bit shakey – i had to improvise 😉 but watch how the three are continually watching each other – to quote one of the general observations from the evening “the non verbal communication amongst the collaborators was visible”.

atabrahams impromptu collaboration from Duncan Wilson on Vimeo.

Other highlights included:

re the cello “it’s a Banks probably made near here in 1750” i wonder which of todays tools we will be using in 2250

re workshops – can you be forced to collaborate or do have to want to collaborate?

re architect and designer – “the collaboration only involved about 4 hours of working together with each other” but then many hours of the teams working together towards the finished product

re can it be built – “not yes you can, but yes we can”

re the ego in the collaboration – the economist does not have signed articles it is a team effort by the editing staff.

and finally… a poem by Roger McGough for the egotistical collaborator

OK what shall we do?