Polly Merredew reflects on her recent Hatching Residency at The Nest.
Fragments, threads and weaving. Three little words, giving rise to many thoughts and questions.
What is my place and how am I woven into this world?
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Lucy Grubb reflects on her recent Hatching Residency at The Nest.
The Moon is a Satellite,
and this city itself feels like my own private constellation.
Adele Mary Reed reflects on her recent Hatching residency at The Nest.
There is nowhere like a nest to knuckle down and nourish yourself. Contained, safe, with wise guardians popping in and out. A trail of breadcrumbs lead me there, meandering path through years, motherhood, lockdowns, urban redevelopment, relationships, travel, wildflowers.
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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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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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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.
Continue reading“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
In London last week, Janet spent time finding green – exploring community gardens, parks, and places where people are reclaiming the city and making space for nature. Her photo essay begins on Monday with a cup of tea in the Onion Garden…
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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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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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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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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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How a twitter thread from Amahra Spence and an interview with Joan Bakewell helped connect Janet’s thoughts about the collective work the F13 network of freelance and independent artists and small arts organisations is doing to devise and produce an event for Coventry’s wider cultural sector, commissioned by Culture Works:
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Words from the Birds 