Today’s music industry rewards speed, visibility and algorithmic traction. Artists are frequently exploited, underpaid and extracted from.

Abubilla Music is an independent label that puts the music - and the artists who make it - first. It believes that great art takes time, and requires space to nurture. The Abubilla Creative Residency exists to provide that.

Held twice a year at Abubilla's studio in Spain, it brings together Abubilla's artists, hand-selected session musicians and producers, and one Curator in Residence — a person whose taste, cultural insight and influence Abubilla admires — for five days of collaboration, connection and music-making.

I’ve worked with Abubilla since 2022, when the Residency existed in a looser, less offical form. Spotting the potential for the Residency to become a manifestation of everything the label stands for, I led a full overhaul of its purpose, methodology and format. I have been designing and facilitating the Residency ever since.

This means running workshops with artists to deepen their practice; designing and facilitating structured conversations that generate insight and cross-pollinate perspectives across different parts of the music ecosystem; and holding the space so that everyone present gets the maximum out of the experience.

What emerges from each edition varies, but consistently includes music written, recorded and arranged; content filmed in and around the villa; relationships forged between artists, musicians and creatives; and — perhaps most valuably — a renewed sense of creative clarity and energy that participants carry back into their work.