Pippa Church reflects on her Hatching Nest Residency

What a gift, this nest residency! 5, uninterrupted, (well, slightly interrupted by child care and snow) days of focus, pondering, wondering, dreaming, scheming and creating!

My aim going into this residency was to get closer to making a burning phoenix puppet, am I any closer to raising it….maybe just a funding application away!

I’m Pippa, I created my company Flawed Mandrake Theatre in 2018 after graduating from the Curious School of Puppetry – its a thing, check it out!

Since then I have created a few different shows and performed at a few festivals but the Nest residency was the first time I could focus without the pressure of any upcoming shows, and what an immensely free-ing process that was, free to make mistakes, free to ponder, free to be distracted – although my distractions were mostly in the form of meeting other artists which was always fruitful in discussion.

The Nest is the most wonderful of spaces, buzzing with activity and filled with creatives. It feels like a space where anything could happen, and indeed with a whale hiding in one room and a glorious giant Lady Godiva in another – anything does happen here on a daily basis.

I had the pleasure of being at the Nest on International Women’s day, I spent far too long talking with Kathy from Imagineer, a brilliant creative mind and wonderful woman who offered me advice, pushed my thinking and focused my idea all in a coffee fuelled hour and a half.

One of the joys of the Nest was the communal drive for being green and eco-friendly. I try my best at home – as we all do, but I have never been in a place of work where striving for the environment is as important as the work that goes on inside the walls. From the milk delivered in glass bottles to the toilet rolls, even little things aren’t overlooked, I have already bought some metal tea infusers and am now buying loose tea! Amazing! This eco workplace is not overbearing, but positive, hopeful, easy and totally normal. 

Anyway, back to the work, I spent many of my days working out wing mechanisms with cardboard (recycled of course) I used a brilliant tool – The Dreamer, The Critic, and The Realist- allowing myself time to be each and challenging the ideas to hone down what it will all finally look like. MY god, my head hurt a LOT after all the thinking, but by the end of the week I was working out the narrative and plot for a full blown puppetry piece involving my flaming flying friend.

Now for that funding bid….