Matt Rheeston reflects on his Hatching Residency

For my Nest Residency I spent time exploring my creativity in a therapeutic way, through drawing, music, song writing and production.

I did my residency part time over 5 weeks so that I could fit it around work and child rearing. Going in, I didn’t have any expectations apart from wanting to learn a little more about music theory, and having time to research music production techniques and my organising skills on Ableton Live.

Every morning I started my residency by listening to my favourite ambient music with a cup of coffee, setting up my space and writing my morning pages before moving on to the day’s creative work.

In the end I didn’t spend as much time researching as I expected I would need to. I thought there would be more times when I didn’t know what to do, and had planned to spend that time researching and learning about theory. But in reality most of the time I was busy creating music or drawing, and I spent more time researching drawing techniques and music production techniques than music theory.

I learnt more about music theory in the form of mentorship from Dez, but more in a holistic way rather that the specifics which I thought I needed to know. Which was a good thing as I was getting bogged down in the perceived “correct” way I thought I should be writing music.

At the end of my residency I came away with a plan of action that was focused on the specific goal of finishing off 5 tracks with artwork. This was thanks to the mentoring from Johnathan at Think Music, who gave me the knowledge and techniques to develop the action plan and time line.

The action plan has helped me organise how to go about this in a time line which makes the goal seem a lot more achievable.

I learnt if given the time and the right kind of space and with no distraction I can focus on a given task for a longer length of time. I have also learned that giving myself smaller more realistic tasks – taking smaller easy steps towards achieving results is really beneficial. Now I have a more focused out look on what I want to achieve with my music and art work.

Im am really grateful that there is a residency of this nature available to creatives in Coventry – I am much more likely to embark on more creative practices outside of my own home thanks to this opportunity.