Jazz Moreton and Alan Wan Wijgerden reflect on their Nest residency

Over the course of this residency, we developed a shared artistic voice that built on our individual experiences of disability. We had a great time examining our shared practice throughout this residency. Although Alan has more professional experience (an age thing, not a professionalism thing!), Jazz has a mind full of fresh ideas and solutions to almost any creative issue.

We learnt the new skill of editing 360 degree video (though we still have more learning to do – Jazz is interested in more creative ways to display video). This process was satisfying but at times frustrating – we lost at least one file, never to be seen again. Dom from Ludic Rooms was a great help with the technical hitches that we faced, and this support was invaluable. Dom was particularly helpful when it came to teaching us new skills in video-editing. This will definitely impact our future work as we are now armed with more skills and knowledge… All we need is use of the hardware!

We embarked upon our Nest residency thinking that we were going to re-edit the last 360 degree film that we made with support from Talking Birds and Ludic Rooms. However, we realised that it was edited to just about the full limitations of the software. Thankfully, we had a plan that allowed for far more learning: a new, cutting-edge, disability arts film that could draw from Jazz’s experiences of disability discrimination.

Our collective voice now cries out to be taken seriously, though at the same time we have developed a shared sense of humour that is specific to our lived experience of disability. Before we embarked on this residency we were focussed on more serious ways to explain discrimination and other social issues.

Unexpectedly, we discovered that it is possible to run two separate versions of the same film at the same time in another format, so we have taken this film further than we initially imagined we would- at least as far as having lots of alternate versions of it!

All we need now is more time and space to realise more ideas- an Action Rayz interactive exhibition, perhaps…