The art of collaboration

Heather Maitland considers the sometimes tricky relationships between arts practitioners and their partners, and offers some tips for keeping professional relationships on the right track

When did you last check the health of your relationship? Here’s a litmus test, Cosmo quiz style:

You like Top Gear and your partner likes cookery programmes. What do you do?
a) ¨ Give your partner the channel changer – it’s more peaceful that way
b) ¨ Give your partner the channel changer – they’ll owe you one
c) ¨ Give your partner the channel changer – but refuse to talk to them for the rest of the evening
d) ¨ Buy another TV.


Buying that extra TV sounds like a simple solution, but is it really such a good idea to be sitting in separate rooms all evening? In a healthy relationship the give and take goes almost unnoticed. So how do we create work partnerships where the compromises necessary for collaboration come as easily?

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Reaching the unreachable

Engaging with hard-to-reach groups is, after all, what tackling social exclusion is all about. But how do you reach the unreachable? Heather Maitland makes some suggestions.

Some arts organisations exist to reach people no-one else engages with. Engaging with hard-to-reach groups is, after all, what tackling social exclusion is all about. But how do you reach the unreachable?

The government has set its agencies working with young people the target of reducing the proportion of 16 to 18 year-olds not in education, employment or training (NEET) by two percentage points by 2010. NEET young people are by definition hard to reach as they are not engaged with any part of the formal infrastructure. It reports that “the reductions [to date] in the proportion of NEET young people are the result of a wide range of organisations working effectively together to target the issue.” This multi-agency approach is adopted by most arts organisations who form partnerships with groups already in contact with NEET young people. But this means that arts organisations only work with young people already engaged in some way with the support system. Should they be targeting the genuinely unreachable instead of focusing on partnerships?

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