Why Collaboration Makes the Work Better

Design is, at its core, the art of solving problems beautifully.

Where an artist might express a single vision, a designer translates many visions into one coherent whole. Collaboration is how that translation happens, how complexity becomes clarity.

There’s a phrase I love and hate at the same time: “Design is making art useful.”
It’s an oversimplification, however it gets to something essential: we take creativity and make it work in the world. We combine perspectives, disciplines, and needs into something that communicates meaning.

When I look at a finished project and can’t quite tell where my idea ended and someone else’s began, that’s when I know it worked. The boundaries blur, the authorship dissolves, and what’s left is something stronger, something shared.

For some time I’ve wanted to explore the origins of my love of collaborative practices and consider how FRAY Studio defines this value, giving it meaning, and how we ensure we are held accountable to it.

Where Our Understanding of Collaboration Comes From

FRAY Studio was built on the traditions of deeply collaborative art forms: Myself and Adam Young cemented our collaboration while working with avant-garde theatre company Complicite where everyone's idea mattered and was heard. We furthered that experience through work in Opera, live performance, exhibitions, and design-led production. Our wider team were trained in environments where light, sound, image, animation, and physical space have to coexist in harmony with one another to tell a singular story.

In these spaces, no single discipline can exist in isolation. The only way a concert, an installation, or an experience truly works for an audience is through constant communication and shared intent amongst creative teams. This creates one unified experience for an audience that can be read and understood on a literal, abstract and poetic level. This is so important to me and the only way I feel i can create a compelling multi level experience for the audience. 

That’s the spirit that underpins FRAY: every project is an act of alignment between different creative minds, commercial needs, different technical realities but with one collective goal - to put on a brilliant show for our audiences.

What Collaboration Means to Us

Collaboration is fundamentally about active listening & understanding not just what is explicitly said, but the underlying needs of others. Crucially, this involves recognising the right moment for those needs to be addressed within the project timeline.

Collaboration means being open and at times vulnerable with your ideas. It’s about trusting the people around you to give those ideas space to grow, change, or even fail. Letting go of ego is essential; it’s not about proving yourself, but about serving the production and the story in the best way possible. Sometimes that means seeing beyond what you personally want to what to see what the work truly needs. And sometimes it means exploring an idea fully, only to realise later it doesn’t belong. That’s not wasted effort, it’s part of the process that makes the final piece stronger, together.

We try to put this into practise via a continual cycle of discussion and feed back with a set of rules in place to keep conversations constructive.  Instead of saying, “I don’t like it,” we ask, “What’s interesting about this, and how could it become more powerful?” That shift, from criticism to construction, is what makes collaboration creative, not combative.

Our approach to collaboration means:

• Listening to understand, not just to reply.
• Speak to make a point, not to fill space.
• Speaking clearly and early about what you need.
• Treating critique as part of creation.
• Valuing every voice equally, from junior designer to creative director.
• Keeping ideas open as long as possible

How We Practise Collaboration

We keep hierarchy light and communication constant. Within our teams, we make sure that ideas can come from anywhere, because the best ones often do, this is an idea that goes rite back to our days of work with Complicite. 

We also see our clients as collaborators. They’re not just commissioning a finished product; they’re shaping a process. Their goals, instincts, and feedback all play a role in defining what the final work becomes.

Beyond the studio, we collaborate with an ever-changing circle of fellow creatives, set designers, lighting designers, sound teams, animators, costume departments, anyone who brings energy and expertise to a project. We listen to their ideas and look for ways to build upon them, just as they build upon ours.

And collaboration doesn’t stop at the creative level. It extends to our technical teams, whose input ensures that our ideas are achievable, within time, budget, space, and scale. The balance between creative ambition and technical possibility is where the most exciting ideas live, is often where ground breaking new ideas come from, and the only way to find that balance is through open conversations.  When we were developing the scenic LED integration for Disney’s Frozen the Musical we worked with Jonathon Lyle, our Technical Associate, Richard Nutbour, a scenic artist, and Christoper Oram, the Set Designer to develop a new technique to turn solid scenery into magical surfaces that came alive with video.  Everyone brought ideas and solutions to the table and we were able to make something unique. 

That’s why we work dynamically: regular practical weekly meetings , daily check-ins during key production stages, and an open culture of conversation that keeps ideas, and information moving.

In the End

At FRAY Studio, collaboration isn’t a slogan.

It’s how we think, how we make, and how we move.

It’s about openness, respect, and the belief that creativity grows through exchange.

It’s about listening as much as speaking.

And it’s about finding, together, the ideas that none of us could have reached alone.