How can we foster mutually uplifting collaboration?

We recently participated in Mil M2’s Question Project, which prompted us to identify a single urgent question that guides our practice. After a workshop that encouraged us to work through personal and collective responses, we landed on the following question:

How can we foster mutually uplifting collaboration?

This question comes from both our mission to empower artists, architects, and designers to produce impactful creative work—as well as our desire to cultivate reciprocal relationships that build community.

The Question Project encouraged participants to print and publicly display their questions in order to generate dialogue within local communities during a time of physical, political, and technological confinement. Though we’ve been working remotely for several months, we dropped into our empty office to post the question in our sixth floor window, which looks out onto Pittsburgh’s Allegheny River. 

We’ve also committed to letting this question guide our practice in 2021—and beyond. In the spirit of putting this exercise to work, we developed a brief 4-minute survey to gauge what our community of creatives needs most this year to further their personal and professional practices. The survey closed on February 28, 2021, and we’re working on putting the results to practice.

Thanks so much for your input!