www.creativereview.co.uk: Debates around the pros and cons of remote working have been rumbling on for years, but the coronavirus crisis has left agencies and studios with little choice but to embrace it. And while it might be manageable for some people, others in the creative industry are finding that WFH isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. For someone like Koto founder and creative director James Greenfield – who’s professed his doubts about remote working in the past – it’s a heavy burden for anyone managing a creative team.
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We've noticed this difficulty, especially in our Imaginarium zoom sessions. There are days when we all have ideas we're throwing out that are hard to explain and like the article said, drawing things out for explanation through video conference is far more difficult. There are really only two options for this, draw it on paper, hold it up to the camera, and hope everyone can see what's on the page or digitally draw. And for those of us working with trackpads, these drawings can come out pretty abysmally and create more confusion than clarity. The amount of time necessary to draw something that everyone can understand tends to waste time and make what would be a 15 minute meeting quickly an hour. Creative meetings online aren't horrible, don't get me wrong, but they're also not convenient or easier in any way. Maybe the only nice thing is the possibility of working outdoors but that's something we could potentially introduce to in-person meetings as well.
Even as a student in the arts, I have absolutely hated having to take remote classes that would have othereise been time spent in the studio, getting to work hands-on. While I appreciate the ways in which the university as a whole rose to the occasion and has adapted to the circumstances, I am honestly not feeling as excited about my work that I did when I was in the classroom. (It is also a major bummer that big projects like Rube and Imaginarium had to be significantly altered.) However, on the bright side, working remotely and also seeing artists adapt to the given circumstances had made me realize how important art and connection is to the world. When everything is back to normal, I hope that we all come back with a great appreciation for live theatre and art, and understand that as more and more elements of our life are transitioning online, theatre is something that simply cannot. Elena Keogh
Relating this back to being a creative within theatre (mainly a designer)...yes and no. Yes because I've found that I am able to think clearly and be more of a creative being when I am off on my own. I can only speak from personal experience, but it's like having a blank canvas- a blank canvas in your head. You have so much mental freedom and it gives you the opportunity to do things your own way. I think that's important for creativity. Not having any external factors influence your process and being able to let the ideas flow when they want to and how they want to. Being in the right space for all of this to happen encourages productivity in these areas and I feel as though being remote facilitates this. When I think back to my undergrad years, creatively, I wasn't very productive in the design studio with my peers. That was more of a space for me to produce tangible work. If I wanted to tap into my creativity, I often found myself going outside where I was alone or somewhere away from the department. Even at home, there were times of the day when I couldn't tap into my creativity because my family's presence was distracting. I'd have to wait until late at night, or days when I was home alone. On the other hand, no, working remote may not be the newest thing for creatives. You need to change your environment and be inspired by things around you. You need to interact with people and have conversations that leave you thinking. You need to be able to have different spaces that allows you to accomplish different things. It's all about balance and having things done in the right space and time. Also, understanding what's right for you. This may all be the case for me but not for the next person.
It is honestly so much more difficult to collaborate digitally. While Zoom is definitely a nice tool to use to connect lately, it is such an awkward and unnatural way of communicating. People try to speak but end up talking over someone else and then you miss what one person is saying because Zoom can only handle one voice at a time. It just adds this digital barrier that makes it so hard to collaborate. Additionally, as we worked through Rube and are currently working on Imaginarium, doing creative work digitally when there was supposed to be a physical product just does not work. We are struggling to find the best mediums to use for our Imaginarium deliverables that work to display our original intent for the project. Working digitally just adds this whole obstacle to try to jump over to make everything as clear as possible. I almost wish we switched gears and worked on projects that are intended to be in a digital format rather than trying to make something into something that it shouldn’t be.
I think that the idea that work can be more accessible for many people it they can work from home is something interesting that should be explored further. I also think this can lead to more international collaboration in the arts. But, overall, this has been really difficult. I've found myself at my least creative over the almost four weeks I've been home. I've thought about the possibility of more theatrical productions developing online, and it just makes me sad. I hate that idea and dread the day it becomes a long-term solution. Not only has it been hard for me as an individual artist, but also as a collaborator. Every meeting I've had since moving to remote learning has been so difficult. Body language and facial expression is so important to the way humans communicate and there's just no way for that to exist on zoom. All in all, I don't think working from home is a valid option for schools, much less for theatre or arts in general. It truly makes everything so difficult and I hope we don't have to move towards it.
I sure hope that a remote working revolution is not coming for creatives, because that is not why I am pursuing a career in this industry. So much is gained from face to face conversations that is simply not possible on a digital platform yet. There is so much to be said for the importance of body language, for being able to draw out ideas on a physical chalkboard or a napkin in front of you, to be able to have multiple (productive) conversations happening at once and easily be able to jump back and forth between them. Zoom meetings wear me out, especially when I have to be the facilitator of conversation, and I feel creatively drained after participating in them. Attempting to have a “normal” meeting like you would in a classroom setting just isn’t how these platforms are designed to operate, and you have to shift your management strategy in order to accommodate for that one more thing.
I'm really torn on this subject, and have been for a while. I really don't like working from home. I despise staring at a screen all day, and there is something irriplaceable about being in the room with people while you're working through creative (or any) problems. That being said, getting robust and effective work from home solutions integrated into our workflows is essential. The obvious benefit shows itself in times of crisis: the flexibility. In global crises like pandemics where travel, movement, and gatherings might be limited, it is the only solution, but even for every day personal crises it can provide significant benefits. If a way to work remotely is already integrated into an organization, then professionals can keep working after, say, flying home to care for a sick relative. Further, the travel industry, and especially the air travel industry, pumps an astonishing amount of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. In an industry like theatre where design teams fly to and fro several times in a process to have meetings, we are creating a huge environmental impact. That travel also creates significant costs for either working professionals or theaters which already operate on thin margins. Eliminating the need for that travel would be an undeniable benefit. Yes, work from home sucks. Maybe we need to get past that.
It’s been very interesting to watch industries, schools, everyone (you name it) navigating the transition to life, and more specifically collaboration, online in the past few weeks. I very much agree with this article that the transition seems much easier for solo workers like editors, while a whole new set of challenges is present for teams of collaborators who so greatly benefitted to working in person. It’s been great to see people adapt to working online, and taking so many considerations into play, especially in the world of theater and with productions that have sadly been cancelled. It has really been testing our ability to think creatively on our feet and problem solve. But it’s been extremely tough, and as the weeks have gone along I think working remotely is starting to take a toll on the students. I know for me, it’s been mentally exhausting to design Imaginarium over the internet—it’s frustrating, confusing, and sad knowing that it’s all theoretical now. However, I do think that this pandemic is going to get us all really comfortable with remote creating, so that’s a plus for our futures. But, I hope so much that the world doesn't default to online remote creating, because so much of the magic of collaboration, especially in this industry, comes from face to face interaction. I miss getting excited about my work and spreading pages all over the floor and gushing over art with other artists.
I've experienced a lot of difficulty trying to be creative or productive in any way during this crisis because of the remote learning and working environment. On a personal level, it's hard to motivate myself to start new projects and learning through the screen makes tasks seem overwhelming. I always feel like there's always something I'd rather be doing (sleeping, making food, etc.) than making more art on top of what I'm already creating for classes. And the points in this article about team management are definitely applicable to my experiences in remote working. It's been hard trying to communicate clear goals and expectations for team work through video calls and emails because the human part of that contact is lost. Trying to balance seriousness and our normal relationships with each other is really difficult when we can't always communicate tone, and everything is just so much more tense in trying to keep everyone working at the rate we are expected to continue at.
Excuse my French but I sure hope the hell it is not. Also the title of the article is quite misleading. I had expected the article to lay out an argument for why a revolution is coming or why it isn't, but it really is more about Greenfield lamenting about the difficulties of remote working for creatives, as well as how it is hard to replace the human interaction that is so essential for a career that requires a lot of collaboration. I know I have hit a real roadblock in my creative life after moving to online university classes and sheltering in place. Unable to separate my work life from my home/leisure life, it is becoming increasingly difficult to meet deadlines or stay motivated. Being unable to get my work done, I don't let myself indulge in my artwork or leisurely activities, which is a vicious cycle of deteriorating work.
I think a remote working ‘revolution’ may be in the future for the country, but not for creative professionals. Some industries are discovering that their workers are able to work from home with equal or even increased efficiency, particularly in jobs that already took place mainly online, such as computer programming. The main difference here is the importance of collaboration - people who succeed in working from home tend to have fairly independent jobs, and communication can happen through email or short, infrequent phone or video calls. This is not the case for the theatre industry. The design process, though frustrating, can work online. Trying to draw things and share them is difficult, and not having materials right in front of you is frustrating, and simply not having everyone in the same room is annoying, but it can work, and sometimes occurs even when there isn’t a global pandemic. But everything after the design process, for build/load-in/tech/performance, trying to work in the usual method is just impossible online, for obvious reasons. So our time right now is spent trying to approximate that with what we have in our homes, and it’s not a great solution, and certainly not one that we would actively prefer to normal operation. If we wanted to be creating online theatre, or going to online school, we would have been doing that already before this.
I really hope that this pandemic does not encourage creative people to work from home in the future after it is safe for us to go back to our everyday lives. There are so many benefits to working with a group of people in a studio and you just can not get those same interactions from a zoom call. It is really beautiful when you are in a room with a bunch of people bouncing around ideas and everyone seems to be on the same page. It is so hard for that to happen over video conferencing because you can not even easily make eye contact with the people you are having the meeting with. It is very frustrating and draining to have zoom meetings back to back all day so I really hope that this does not continue to be a tool we use too often in the future.
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