Creativity And Collaboration

A discussion, demonstration and performance on the power of collaboration.

The Olympics. X-Factor. The Rich List. The Nobel Prize. Everywhere you look: competition – for fame, money, attention, status.

We depend on competition and expect it to identify the best, make complicated decisions easy, to motivate the lazy and inspire the dreamers. But rivalry regularly produces just what we don't want: rising levels of fraud, cheating, stress, inequality and political stalemate. Is there another way?

In this ground-breaking discussion, demonstration and performance, the writer Margaret Heffernan, the surgeon Roger Kneebone and musicians Joanna MacGregor and Andy Sheppard share their ideas about the value of collaborative working; whether it be a surgeon in the operating theatre, an entrepreneur putting a team together, or musicians playing and improvising in such a way that mutual understanding becomes both instinctive and perhaps more creative and imaginative than anything that could be achieved by one person alone.

Joanna Macgregor and Andy Sheppard also perform three numbers from the album Deep River.