Conversations among creative parents

From the grand reopening of the Creative Parenting Podcast

Good afternoon and welcome back to Creative Parenting Club. We hope you and your family have had a good week.

Normally we wouldn’t hit you with big news on a Friday, but if you’re anything like us, you love a good podcast while you’re doing your weekend chores.

Which means: we’ve got you covered!

Today we’re pleased to announce the relaunch of the Creative Parenting Podcast: raw, direct and uncut audio from our interviews with creative parents.

Those of you who’ve been here for awhile know that these conversations are at the heart of what we try to offer our community. Honest perspectives from parents around the world navigating the joys and challenges of being a creative person with kids.

After a few months of getting in rhythm, we’re pleased to share our very first recorded interview: a special kickoff episode featuring CPC co-hosts

Matthew Buccelli

and

Diego Ain

.

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A new chapter

In the weeks and months to come, we’ll be sharing more and more of our interviews with creative parents as tandem podcast episodes, for all the parents out there who feel overwhelmed by all the things there are to read (🙋‍♂️).

Each podcast episode will be around 30 minutes. You’re busy, we’re busy — we understand each other.

For those who prefer the written word, we’ll continue publishing a lightly edited transcript as part of each CPC newsletter.

And if you like the idea of hearing from interesting, creative parents in audio form — and can’t wait for the next CPC podcast — there are five archival episodes from our original season, back when we were called ParentSounds. You can find them anytime at creativeparents.substack.com/podcast.

We hope you enjoy this week’s grand reopening.

Thanks as always for being here, and see you next week!

What role does creativity play in your life?

An excerpt from the relaunch of the Creative Parenting Podcast

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[Diego Ain, Creative Parenting Club]

So Matt, tell us more about the relaunch of the Creative Parenting Club.

[Matthew Buccelli, Creative Parenting Club]

Well, as many people reading this know, Creative Parenting Club actually was relaunched back in January. Our newsletter and community has already been growing again for a couple of months, and the project actually has its first origins going back two years.

And you got involved in the project last year, didn't you?

[Diego]

Yes, originally through the Kinder Rave, our project where we throw techno parties for the whole family.

And because I'm someone who works with electronic music, I ended up getting there with my family and we connected and started to work together with the idea of developing the Kinder Rave. And you told me, well, Diego, I also have this Substack I started. So here we are.

[Matt]

Here we are. We're excited to relaunch the CPC podcast, and in the coming weeks and months we're going to be releasing a lot of really great interviews that we've been working on, talking to creative parents about how they balance creativity and family life.

But we wanted to start by talking to each other about some of the same questions that we're going to be asking other parents.

[Diego]

Yeah, we thought it would be a nice way to start this new phase of the project by introducing ourselves to you, our beloved community. So, Matt, tell me a little bit about yourself.

[Matt]

Well, I'm originally from the United States. I've been living in Berlin for almost 10 years. I moved here from Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Before that I lived my whole life in the United States until I was 26 years old.

I live here in Berlin now with my wife, Zara, and our two kids. And you and I have known each other for about a year-and-a-half now.

How did you find your way to Berlin?

[Diego]

I'm originally from Brazil. I lived many years in Spain where I met my partner, Olivia. And together we moved to Berlin in 2014. And we had our first kid here in 2016. Now I have two girls, 8 years old and 3 years old.

[Matt]

That brings up a point that I've always found super interesting, both about your parenting journey and also about your Berlin journey. You and Olivia, you were living the life in Madrid, right, if I'm not mistaken?

[Diego]

That’s true.

[Matt]

And then you decided to come to Berlin. You’re an electronic music producer. You do this really cool stuff with live techno.

At this point I’m sure you’re thinking: Berlin is gonna be the place, your next stop on the journey. And what ended up actually happening right after you got here?

[Diego]

So we came here because we felt that Spain couldn't give us more land to develop professionally. I do electronic music, but because I created this specific way of making music where I make music using the sounds of my body, voice, and random objects, everyday objects, that the making music with objects opened me a huge door to collaborate with brands. So I started to develop custom-made content for brands and events in the format of live shows and videos.

And Olivia is actually part of the first generation of co-working founders in Europe. So she was very well connected to the co-working scene. My first time to Berlin was in 2014. I came to play at the fifth anniversary of betahaus, which was the first co-working space in Germany, actually. And we had a lot of cool opportunities come together just from that one evening. So we came, knowing that having access to a co-working space as a landing place already was a big advance in starting life in a new place. And in this first year, it was what we planned. We worked like crazy. We didn't party.

Nowadays we're like, oh, we should have maybe done all that before we had the kids. After a year here, Olivia got pregnant and Eleanor, our older daughter was born.

[Matt]

So your Berlin story is kind of like almost on the same exact arc as your parenting story.

[Diego]

Yeah, it is. I don't even remember the time without having kids in Berlin. Berlin, for me, is family.

But enough about me. Matt, I've met you on the dance floor, organizing events, parties and things like that. But I know that your job is not completely connected to the creative world, right? What do you do professionally?

[Matt]

Well, what's interesting is we just talked about how your Berlin story is very integrated with your parenting story. And in my case, my story as a creative is very closely integrated with my parenting story.

I have worked for most of my career in various forms of marketing and business development consulting. But I have always considered myself a creative person. I’ve always been someone with creative hobbies and too many interests. And one of those interests was to learn how to DJ, basically ever since I came to Berlin.

And most people who DJ and are also parents, it's maybe something from their old life. But for me, it's a little bit flipped around because going into the year 2022, I had a new year's resolution that year that might be a little bit surprising for a 30-something year old man with a 1 1/2 year-old at home. I wanted to learn how to DJ.

So I decided to just go and get it. I borrowed a DJ controller from a friend of mine. And I got addicted.

I think anyone who has learned to mix music can probably relate to this. Once I figured it out, it was just like endless late nights, playing around, mixing music after my daughter was in bed. And then the next logical point that you come to is, well, okay, where can I have that exhilarating feeling of making other people dance to the music that I'm playing.

But on the other hand, at the time I have a 1 1/2 year-old kid. And my wife and I had just found out that we were gonna be expecting our second. So this all led very directly into the start of the Kinder Rave.

I was not expecting anything when we began. I started a group on Telegram to try and organize some parents who were also interested in meeting up and having electronic music parties with our kids. It started out as us just throwing parties in the park. And it was really kind of an, “if you build it, people will come” type of situation.

We started showing up and quickly more parents started coming than I had really ever even dreamed of at the beginning. And then it just started growing and growing. The Telegram group got bigger.

Eventually, about a year later, you showed up. And now we're throwing more official parties. And I'm kind of getting involved in all this creative work that I had never necessarily seen as being a part of what I do for a living.

Matt and Diego (left), many Kinder Raves later

[Diego]

What role does creativity play in your life?

[Matt]

Well, yeah, this kind of piggybacks a little bit on the last question because creativity has always played a massive role in my life. I took music lessons growing up. I played in a couple of different bands in high school. I'm always someone who's had a guitar around who loves to jam, who loves to draw. I've always had a lot of hobbies in general.

And it's interesting now kind of moving in this direction of working more professionally with creativity. It's great and I love it. But I also kind of feel sometimes like maybe that organic creativity – picking up an instrument, writing in my journal – I find that I don't do it quite as much because I'm spending my working days with creative stuff, with organizing events, or curating a set, or whatever. And then it's like at the end of my workday, I just wanna do what most people who aren't hyperactive like me probably do at the end of their workday. Like actually relax or read a book or watch Netflix or something.

So it's something I've been trying to get back to a little bit: rediscovering the joy of sitting down and writing or drawing something and not necessarily having it need to have a purpose.

[Diego]

It's interesting because if I would answer what creativity is for me or what role it plays in my life, it would be much more connected to being able to see things from a different perspective. For you, I understand that creativity is directly connected to arts, right? For me, creativity is problem-solving, improvising in a situation where things are not going the way you plan.

And I think that's why a lot of people think and say they're not creative, right? I met a guy in Spain, the guy's like 30-something and he’s this serial entrepreneur.

I was playing at Madrid Fashion Week, he was there. And he was like, “oh man, amazing what you do, too bad I'm not creative”. And then we started to talk and it turned out this guy was actually a creative monster – but applied to business.

And I’m like man, what are you telling me? You're super creative, you're just applying it to something different, right?

So my answer to that question would be that creativity for me applies or plays a role in my life every time that I'm being flexible, every time I'm doing the exercise of seeing things from a different perspective, every time I'm trying to go with the flow, right? In those moments I see myself being creative.

[Matt]

That's it, yeah, I've always taken a lot of personal pride in being resourceful, seeing myself as a resourceful person. Anyone who takes pride in thinking outside the box can also look at themselves as a creative person, right? Because that's exactly what you're doing.

What we're gonna be primarily focusing on, of course, in this podcast is talking to parents who are juggling family life with whatever their creative hobby or career might be.

But actually, even just the way they go about their parenting might in itself be creative.

[Diego]

And that's the whole goal of the community is for all of you, all of us, to feel creative and welcome independently of your art skills, right? And even your art connection. For me, creativity is everywhere, and it's not always connected to the arts.

[Matt]

We're gonna wrap up in a moment here, but actually, before we do that, I want to improvise one question.

What's the most creative thing that you've found yourself doing to get through an unexpected parenting situation?

[Diego]

Singing. It even ended up in one of my albums, this song. I’d just had a big argument with my partner. At that time we only had Eleanor, my first daughter, and she was small, and I had to give her a bath.

And it was a tough moment. She was full of energy, and also in the middle of her terrible twos. And because I had just had a big fight, I didn't want to go in with that energy. So I ended up singing these four words: “music, will save us.”

And Eleanor started singing it back to me. And we had this very telepathic moment with the whole shower changing to a much nicer environment and we got our evening back on the right track.

So yeah, I ended up doing a voice note of that and turned it into one of my tracks. You can listen on Spotify: Ain TheMachine, Music Will Save Us.

[Matt]

Yeah, well, the reason I asked you this question is because one of the things I really admire about the way that you parent, and also the way that you juggle your creative work is that whenever I come to Diego's studio here, I never know how many kids I'm gonna find. It might be one, it might be two, it's usually not more than two, although one time it was four when I brought mine over as well.

And yeah, I love the way that you sit here and you get your work done, whether it's emails or calls or whether you're producing a track or doing more kind of music focused creative time. And I love the way that your girls just hang out. Eleanor is 8 years old now, but Elsa is still quite young. She's 3, right?

[Diego]

Yeah, she's 3.

[Matt]

She's 3. So, with an 8 year-old, they get a little bit more self-sufficient, but definitely with a three year old, I think most of us would still look at that as being an age that's very hands-on, but I love the way that your girls just kind of hang out here and you introduce them, you are hands-on with them, integrating them into your music, which I think is great, but also they know that when they come to the studio, it's like papa's working time and they've just got to find a way to keep themselves busy. And I think that that's, I really admire the way that you kind of integrate your family into not just the fact that you like to make music, but also this is what I do for work and you're gonna hang out here while I work.

[Diego]

Yeah, thank you. I take the words, Matt, thank you very much. And thanks to everyone for reading/tuning in.

A reminder that if you haven't already, you can join the Creative Parenting Club community anytime by going to creativeparents.substack.com.

Subscribe to join our community where you can connect with and learn from creatively-minded parents around the world.

[Matt]

We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Creative Parenting Podcast. There's gonna be a lot more to come. So thanks again for being here, and see you next time on CPC.