A bit like learning to dance? Collaborative working & Fumbally Exchange

Following on with our blogs from the 2012 Finalists, we meet George Boyle of Fumbally Exchange.

A bit like Learning to Dance?

I used to be afraid of dancing. I soon got over it.

I didn’t believe it could be true – a place where you were free to unleash your inner wilds without rebuke. It took such excruciating time and effort to learn “the codes”, so this public invitation to exhibitionism and indulgence was – an incredible nonsense.

Collaboration is a lot like that. It is a celebration of personal potential – a recognition of an articulate regard you have for your partners and a willingness to deeply engage with them in the service of a shared objective. It is fleeting, probably challenging – gruelling but intense – and in the most profound sense – euphorically rewarding.

Collaboration is contagious. Especially among creative types. When we established Fumbally Exchange we were hopeful that this kind of co-working revolution might infect the air. We had no idea! It is – quite simply – epidemic.
Personally, I’ve engaged in over seventy separate collaborative projects since Fumbally Exchange opened its doors in 2010. Some were fee-earning, some voluntary. I worked as and with other architects, technicians, interior designers, landscape architects, urban designers, conservationists, engineers, contractors, developers, property tycoons, specialist trades and crafts people. So much, so maybe a version of yesterday’s news.

The profile of participants at Fumbally Exchange is based on criteria of “design and innovation” and is, therefore broad-reaching in scope and skill set. As a result, my project paths brought me into peculiar liaisons with branding, advertising, graphic design, modelling, industrial design, marketing, service design, financial and business planning, legal choreography, journalism, copywriting, social entrepreneurship, wacky invention and innovation, information management, art, theatre, dance, music and all the contemporary performance arts. These have been fundamentally influential.

Each time I step out on the professional stage it’s a strange platform, holding the hand of a new, temporary but expertly skilled partner – I feel that exhilarating thung, thung – sensing the rhythm of an evolving, infectious and distinctly unique beat arising from this short, closely coordinated contract.

It is such a privilege to embark on these light, often intimate sashays into the spot light. They teach you to appreciate and value so much the balance you strike with your partner as you together craft a lasting tribute to the task in hand.
And whether it’s that you’re only as good as your last job – or the competitive spark ignites every time – or that there is no room for complacency, boredom, excess – I don’t know…. But you certainly TRY harder.

It may be simply the euphoria borne of the raw pleasures of team dynamic – that essence at the centre of all sport, dramatic – even political and religious endeavour?

All I know is the satisfaction runs deep and the products are – elevating and surprising. And with the diversity and global profile of our participant mix – it makes for sweetly tolerant, rich, convivial, supportive community living.
As years of recession stretch out behind us and probably ahead of us – to many it looks like a barren wasteland full of hazards and deeply distressing ghosts and dreams.

But for some of us that wasteland is a dance floor. And my dance card is full.
“I can hear the sound of violins Long before It begins ….”

www.fumballyexchange.com
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