Principles of Collective Wisdom

Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab on 2019-07-24

As part of our series for the Collective Wisdom field study, we present these principles for co-creation.

  1. Create projects that don’t originate from the single-author vision. Rather, ideas originate from relationships.
  2. Create projects that emerge from the process, potentially with many outcomes rather than solely outcome-driven processes.
  3. Make media with people and from within communities, rather than for, or about, them.
  4. Reframe who gets to tell which story, who owns it and why, Grounded in principles of racial equity, narrative sovereignty and digital justice.
  5. Work with citizens, communities, and scholars across institutions, across disciplines, in a shared, parallel discovery process. These processes are often entangled with non-human systems.
  6. Ensure all partners respect each other’s expertise, including first-hand experience. Challenge power dynamics, and prioritize inclusion, equity and diversity.
  7. Use appropriate technology, workflows, tools, protocols, leadership, teams and roles, and multiple modes of storytelling.
  8. Ensure that impact, sustainability, healing and reciprocity are paramount. How will communities benefit from the project?
  9. Not only interpret the world, but change it. Tackle complex problems by acknowledging a multiplicity of points-of-view, and ensure that solutions come from within communities.
  10. Share and learn. Be open. Contribute to transparent, open and public knowledge frameworks.

This article is part of Collective Wisdom, an Immerse series created in collaboration with Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab. Immerse’s series features excerpts from MIT Open Documentary Lab’s larger field study — Collective Wisdom: Co-Creating Media within Communities, across Disciplines and with Algorithms — as well as bonus interviews and exclusive content.

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