FAQ

What is this blog all about?

Collabor-ART is the online home of a lightly juried European community which was founded to facilitate collaborative mixed media art projects.  (phew, that's a bit of a mouthful of a sentence isn't it!)

The scope of these collaborations range from direct 1-to-1 swaps and co-productions up to large round robins.

What do we mean by "mixed media art"?  Well there are no strict dos and don'ts, but our main focus would be some or all of:

• 'art journal' style
• collage
• stuff we have painted or drawn or doodled ourselves
• a hodge podge of materials from fine art supplies to textiles to found objects and some crafting supplies thrown into the mix 
• something different or unique, modern, maybe a little abstract or edgy

and not so much of:

• digital creations
• 100% reliance on shop bought papers and embellishments
• traditional fine art (eg pretty watercolour landscapes or portraits in oils - all fantastic of course, and like digi, has a place, but that place probably isn't here, sorry!)

The focus of the site will mainly be on true collaborations - where two or more people work together on one finished product - but there will be the occasional classic swap (where you make something for someone else) - eg our Mail Art Trail

How do I join in?

Please email us and let us know a little about yourself, including:

• some examples of your work or a link to your blog / Flickr etc
• some form of reference in relation to your timekeeping / reliability in recent swaps and collaborations (eg Swap-bot or UKScrappers ratings, swap threads on message boards etc)

We’ll aim to get back to you within a couple of days.

Why does membership have to be "juried"? 

The most common reasons for people not enjoying collaborative projects are because other people in the process have let them down in some way – either by consistently missing posting deadlines, being generally uncommunicative, or worse, disappearing completely and not passing on artwork that belongs to other people – or by not putting the same level of effort into their contributions as other people in the group, leaving the rest feeling rather shortchanged.

The jury process aims to protect our members from these disappointments as much as possible.

The membership process is in no way designed to create a clique or an exclusive "pals club" - we aim to accept the vast majority of applicants so please don't be put off!  And it is absolutely NOT a judgement on whether or not your work is "good enough".  It is in place simply to maintain levels of effort and reliability - in order to ensure that swapping and collaborating within this community is an enjoyable and rewarding experience for all involved.

I live outside of Europe, can I join?

For the sake of swift(ish) and cheap(er) postage, it would definitely be easiest to keep this to a UK and Europe only group.

If the site grows in popularity, though, perhaps we could set up subgroups for other nationalities....let's see how it goes...

What happens when I join?

You will be added as a co-author to the blog so that you can set up new swaps if you wish, or upload photos of your work.  Your email address will also be added to the list that is sent to all members so that we can contact each other in private as well as in public on the blog - for example to swap addresses for a postal exchange.

We'll also ask that you pen an "Introducing....." post, like this one, with a couple of examples of your work and a little blurb about who you are and what kinds of projects you might be interested in.

How many swaps will I be expected to participate in?

There is no minimum level of commitment so feel free to join in as much or as little as you like. Some of our ongoing swaps like the mailart project are very easy to fit in - make just one postcard and you're done.

Also, if our longer term projects look tempting but the timetable doesn't really fit your schedule, remember that any of our members can set up new projects, so feel free to initiate one yourself that better fits the time you have available

At the other end of the scale, if you like the look of absolutely everything offered on the site and want to sign up for the lot, please do be sure to have a think and make sure that you're not over committing yourself.  We're aiming for quality over quantity here.   But if you can manage quality AND quantity, great! :)



If you have any further questions - please feel free to ask away in the comments section below or drop us an email