14 December, 2022
As another dance around the sun comes full circle, the time is ripe for reflection and looking back at the highlights of the year just gone, especially during such a challenging one for arts organisations. After last year’s tentative step back into in-person events, this year saw The Nest Collective deliver our full programme once again, creating space for music, nature and community to flourish. We’re a small team who love what we do, and are so proud to share these projects with you, so here are our personal favourite moments from 2022. We hope you’ve had a nourishing time with us – either virtually or in person – and we hope to see you again in the new year ♥︎
Sam Lee (Artistic Director)
Singing with Nightingales at the end of May, with the full moon about to go into eclipse, Zimbabwean Mbira player Anna Mudeka leading us after dark through a post-rainstormed steaming forest with strips of moonbeams around us, and then Anna’s mind-blowing invocation of the elements where she summoned the storm and played to an electric display. No one left un-mind-blown!
Jess Blackstone (Executive Director)
Watching hundreds of happy revellers strip the willow in the beautiful setting of Grand Junction on our Burns Night Ceilidh!
Laura Sheldon (Finance Manager)
My fav Nest moment was the Campfire Club with Kadialy Kouyate at Hawkwood – a joyous, reflective and long awaited-for coming together of two of my favourite organisations. With the added incredible-ness of Kadialy playing the kora in almost complete darkness.
Ollie Denton (Marketing Manager)
The incredible spontaneous final performance at the Singing With Nightingales Festival, with all four musicians performing together in that amazing hidden clearing under the oak trees, and the nightingale’s song echoing all around. It was a storybook moment and a real reminder of the magic that can happen in those woods in springtime.
Tiff Wear (Producer)
We walked through the gate and the field dropped away in front of us down towards the old railway track. A full moon cast silver light through the haze, the shadows of the group etched on the path. A few nightingales had already found their voice, their songs trickling through the night air. Another song, recently returned to those fields, also rose up in the darkness. The wild prehistoric sound of the lapwings that were nesting nearby. An owl chimed in. The marsh frogs threw in a few well timed croaks. Then an electrical storm broke over the forest in the distance. Silent shimmering flashes. It felt like the beginning of the world. Anna Mudeka, the extraordinary Zimbabwean Mbira played, then enchanted the nightingale, weaving songs, poetry and incantations into a river of sound. The heavens opened and a tropical downpour put a swift end to the music making. Not a bad day at the office!
Seraphina D’Arby (Marketing Officer)
Huddled in the crypt of Grand Junction, during the final event of the year – Magpie’s Nest Autumn – listening to the dulcet tones of Steve Pretty on the conch shell & Valeria Kurbatova on the harp, played through a myriad of looping, echoing, reverberating pedals to cloak the air in music magic. People lay on cushions on the floor with eyes closed, spellbound by sound, totally enraptured in the present moment. It was the perfect way to round off a jam-packed year of Nest events, full of meditative moments and more raucous sets as the evening flowed.
