Author: Charlie

More Kate Bush, less Britney Spears

| Charlie

Michelle Bailey reflects on her Hatching Residency

I always tell people (and myself) that if I had more time I would be able to be more productive and creative. But the reality is that I’m the biggest detriment to my creativity. I could find the time, I could be more focused, I could be more disciplined. So when I finally got the time and space to work on a new idea, I was excited but also anxious about the experience. What if I can’t do it? What if my work is rubbish? What if I fail at it?

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Show, Don’t tell

| Charlie

Jake Barrowcliffe reflects on his Hatching residency

As part of my residency at The Nest, I was required to write a blog post. For some reason, I decided that what I would do instead was write about my experiences as they happened. This has taken the form of a journal of sorts. Now, I will warn you immediately, I have never kept a diary before. I often find my day to day life so utterly boring that the idea of reliving the moment-by-moment banality while writing it down and then by reading it back years later is like a Kafka-esque nightmare to me. However, this details something unusual and out of the ordinary. I do hope, dear reader, that you find some use in what follows or, at least, some entertainment.

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Changing landscapes

| Charlie

Tom Godwin reflects on his Hatching Nest Residency

My hatching residency revolved around an old photograph I found amongst some of my grandad’s possessions of Coventry City centre taken around the ’60s. I was immediately fascinated with the differences to the present day and the idea of changing landscapes and our role in shaping these changes as well as my own personal connection to the landscapes around me. My initial plan was to go into this residency with just this picture and an open mind to take this project in any direction it took me.

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Now for that funding bid….

| Charlie

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!

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Time (and time again)

| Charlie

Sarah Owen reflects on their second residency at the Nest

One of the last things I said before I finished my second residency at the Nest back in July 2022 was a tongue-in-cheek promise that it wouldn’t take me three months to write my blog about my experience, after I did exactly that last time. In my defence, I didn’t lie. However, taking eight months to write it instead was not exactly my intention. But! Better late than never, and I think I can (and I will) argue that it’s sort of appropriate for a person who spent their Nest residency working on a stage musical about time to also be consistently dogged by time as a concept. 

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Don’t Touch My Hair

| Charlie

Rosa Francesca reflects on her Coventry Biennial Nest Residency

In 2021 I completed a Nest Residency on the subject of Black hair and the Natural Hair movement, particularly looking at how Black women’s relationship with their hair is often intruded upon, either physically by white people touching it without consent, or through unsolicited advice and comments  on its styling. My project was a cybernetic wig, using a variety of sensors to create an interactive wig that both entices and reprimands users to interact with the wig.

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The Drugs Don’t Work, But the coffee does

| Charlie

Filmmaker Adrian Dowling reflects on his Nestival Residency

It took me more than two months to apply to do the residency. I kept putting it off because I find those kind of things very difficult, but after attending one of the F13 meetings I felt quite comfortable in the space. Duncan Whitley [a former Talking Birds Resident] was pushing me, saying “Why don’t you do it? I think it would be good for you.” So I recorded a voice application with the help of my daughter, Kady, who’s doing all the technical stuff while I’m reading off some paper because I find it quite difficult to write things down.

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Action Rayz in 3 Dimensions

| Charlie

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.

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A window of uninterrupted music

| Charlie

Mason Le Long Reflects on his Hatching Residency with Talking Birds

To be honest, I thought it sounded too good to be true. Talking Birds promising to pay artists to come and work in their studios for ten days, and not even asking for any finished material at the end of it? I thought there must be more to it than meets the eye.

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