Together or Separately: Dilemmas of Group Work in Professional Creativity

Abstract

The main purpose of the paper is to provide a concise account of the advantages and disadvantages of group work in the activity of professional artists cooperating in various creative teams. The analyzed data comes from three different sources: the authors’ own experience gained through their work as part of various focus groups, other authors’ research results found in the publications on creatology, and the authors’ own investigative work. The aspects of teamwork (group mind) as well as limitations and drawbacks of team work in groups (group thinking) are discussed in the first part of the paper. The second part describes select results of research conducted over the last few years among Polish female artists and film and theatre directors working on joint projects in creative teams. The study examined the determinants of the women’s creative careers. The final section includes a number of conclusions that aim to answer the question posed in the title of the paper.