Author: vornster

space to move

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Rosa Francesca reflects on her recent Hatching Residency

Impetus and Intention

In early 2024 I suffered an illness that rapidly took over my life. I had been experiencing joint issues for a few years, and because of this illness I quickly deteriorated further to the point that I could barely walk or speak and became an ambulatory wheelchair user. I fully expected to be totally unable to walk by the end of the year, however after spending time in hospital I was able to massively improve my health and found myself gaining back my mobility.

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Confusion is where breakthroughs happen too

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n:u reflects on their recent Nest Residency, which followed on from – and built on – their time as a MAIA fellow and residency at Yard.

During my residency with Talking Birds i reflected on my practice, and my sense of direction. 5 years ago my first contract in the UK was with Talking Birds for a residency. It was remote from home, due to COVID-19 lockdown. This time again, as an ode to that time i did the residency remote. i started walking a lot around Birmingham more than i had done across 4 years living here. Walking supports my digestive processes and i had a lot to digest.

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Treading Water

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Reisz Amos reflects on his recent Hatching Residency, which followed on from – and built on – his time as a MAIA fellow and his residency at Yard.

“The freedom to discover without pressure of presentation
has allowed me to dream dreams I didn’t believe I was allowed to.
Talking Birds has cultivated the birth of a new creative version of myself!”

Reisz ‘Odd Priest’ Amos

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citizens making something happen

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It takes courage to step up and organise something to make life in your neighbourhood or city better. Even when it’s part of your job it takes courage: What if no-one turns up? What if it rains? What if people don’t like what we’re doing? What if doing this makes us look stupid? What if we fail? These (and many other) questions plague us (and every artist) every time we/they do something. When you have raised funding to make your event happen, the pressure is even more intense – this is public money and there’s a big responsibility to make sure it is spent well.

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In search of magical capabilites

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This spring Talking Birds has been working with colleagues at the University of Warwick on the ‘AI in the Street‘ project, which is researching communities’ perspectives on, and feelings about, the AI-enabling infrastructure that lines our streets. The project aims to add citizen-voices into discussions about future infrastructure installation and invisible data gathering projects, whilst questioning how open and responsible the current processes are. The project has collaborative teams working in London, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Coventry, with the site of the Coventry Observatory being the Holyhead Road – which marks the border between Lower Coundon and Spon End.

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Reporting on The Future Works Event

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As followers of this blog will know, the F13 network – a broad coalition of independent artists and arts organisations, freelance creative practitioners and other interested parties convened by Talking Birds – was commissioned (on the back of its ‘Creating the Conditions for Creation‘ draft action plan) to develop and produce an event (The Future Works) to bring the creative sector back together, to move forwards after the turbulence of the last few years. (This process has been pretty extensively blogged, so if you need a catch up, maybe best to start here.)

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Time to find out if the future works

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A Cultural Strategy sounds boring. And sometimes it is boring. But a good Cultural Strategy can tell a compelling story of a place – of its values and ambitions. Of its hopes and dreams. Of its direction of travel.

Some people think that our city has stalled. But we don’t think that’s true – and so we’ve invited artists and decision-makers to gather and re-set: let’s collectively re-imagine our story and work out how we want to tell it.

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What would happen if we used Citizens’ Assemblies to crowdsource arts policy?

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Communities would be engaged and empowered and arts policies would be invigorated, says Janet Vaughan, co-artistic director of Coventry-based artists company Talking Birds, whose work focuses on the relationship between people and place.

Attempting to banish the consultation fatigue of four years’ involvement in the preparation for Coventry’s time as UK City of Culture in 2021, and desperate to understand what value ‘ordinary people’ placed on arts and culture, Talking Birds called a Citizens’ Assembly in the city on arts, culture and creativity.

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Arts Covolution

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Guest post by Stella Backhouse, a writer based in Coventry. This post was originally published in issue #6 of Action Rayz zine, curated by Jazz Moreton & Alan Van Wijgerden. Details of Action Rayz’ regular film club screenings can be found here.

After the very public collapse of City of Culture Trust and the promised ‘legacy’ of Coventry’s year as UK City of Culture well and truly on the scrapheap, where does the city’s arts scene go from here?

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