Posts with tag Collaboration

Contradictions. It’s the word mostly used to describe India to us. Contradictions, complexity and fast transition. To work in such a context you need to be flexible, an article in the daily newspaper The Hindu (Oct, 29) states. To be successful in your career you need among a number things; to step out of your comfort zone, build an open-minded and proactive attitude, always look to experiment with new work and be willing to take risks. For the curios reader, Nätverkstan did a study on the topic of leadship within cultural life in Sweden, where these competencies were found as important for future leaders (in Swedish: ledarskap.pdf). The study was done in 2007, in cooperation with the Cultural Leadership Award, set up by the British organisation Nesta. The experience from the Award states that a new type of leadership training is needed to meet changes and new demand – such as flexibility, risktaking, international outlook, resourcefulness and reflection.

”The beauty of collaboration is that it’s not about rationalising. You don’t have to speak so much, just do it”. Artistic Director of Attakkalari, Jayachandran Palazhy, meet us at his office, after giving us a glimpse of their new production, a work-in-progress. The dance company mixes research, dance, theatre, music, digitalisation, philosophy, to find new expressions in performing arts. As he says: ”New thinking is the key in this new paradigm shift”.

”Life is more than shopping!”. We zick-zack the streets of Bangalore in a rickshaw to go back to the hotel and try, like a number of times today, to explain to the driver that we are not interested in going shopping. Every driver knows where the best shopping is, something usually coinciding with where they have friends, and they try to drive us there. Business is made in every corner in this around 10 million-people city. The Silicon Valley of India, as many call it, is full of contradictions.

”One billion people have two billion opinions!”, they tell us at Suchitra Cinema and Cultural Academy. ”it’s not possible to agree”, they say with a laugh, ”There are contradictions everywhere. Just look outside”. Suchitra Cinema and Cultural Academy run a filmfestival with films from all over the world, show around 100 screenings a year, have filmpolitical discussions, workshops and, together with this, teach languages.

The film industry in India is, as they put it, a ”Masala industry”. The large Bollywood productions has taken over, which makes it hard for smaller films to get distributed and recognised as an important part of the industry. Together with a lack of strong film policy and also of theoretical framework, analysis and film critics, the alternative filmmaking struggle with difficulties. A start would be to arrange training and education that is not only very practical as today, but also teaches a theoretical framework to give coming filmmakers, producers and editors tools for analysis and context.

We are introduced to the three ways of cooporation you need: 1) internal cooperation within your organisation, 2) corporate and public cooperation (you will need to balance between both these, specifically in the India context), and 3) cooperation on a local and international level.