The Collaboration Room boosts campus creativity

The house at 214 N. Rogers St. may look to be a typical Bloomington residence with a unique blue door, but the creativity brewing inside is not so typical.

This building is home to The Collaboration Room, an artistic space in Bloomington that initiates projects centered on, as its name suggests, collaboration.

The space offers the Bloomington art community a variety of workshops and events open for participation and interaction. One such event is Sewing Labs every other Thursday, and another is a recent project called Collaboween.

This project consisted of two weeks of Halloween-themed artistic events and shows.
TCR was an idea Matthew Searle, the studio’s founder and director, said he had long before coming to Bloomington. He said he chose Bloomington for the location of the project because of the positive characteristics the city possesses.

“Bloomington has unique factors that seemed ripe for beginning the project here: It is a smaller community, it has a constant influx of creative and talented adults and it seemed like a responsive forum for people of all ages and abilities to work together creatively,” Searle said.

Searle worked at a children’s art and technology museum for two years before starting the room.

He said he used the large, open workspaces designed for creative collaboration as inspiration for his studio’s layout.

The main initiative behind the room is to bring people together through artistic participation, something Searle said is “magic.” He said he believes the key to successful participation is to first recognize that every individual, despite differences in artistic expertise, already brings a lot to the table.

Lynn Beavin, sophomore and president of Collins Living-Learning Center’s Arts Council, said the studio has a unique capacity to reach out to a broad range of people.
“This group is fostering community building and innovation, which is inspiring to me,” Beavin said.

Beavin attended a participant meeting event at the room. These meetings are open forums for Bloomington residents with artistic ideas or programs that hope to partner with the studio for their projects.

Beavin said the group was incredibly open to ideas and innovation from anyone.
John Berry, a Collaboration Room key member, said he became involved with The Collaboration Room because of the vision he shared with Searle for a less institutionally approved art venue.

The room runs on participation and outside ideas.

Both Searle and Berry said they want people to use the studio’s space to help them do what they couldn’t do otherwise. The two said they believe there are some artistic goals that can only be accomplished when achieved by a group.

“Simply put, there are times when a group of people can do something with more boldness, volume, nuance, exposure or vitality than an individual could do,” Berry said. “When that community is needed, we wanted to make sure The Collaboration Room could be that meeting place for Bloomington creatives.”