Fulbright (2021)

Jools Gilson was delighted to be a 2021 Irish Fulbright Scholar. She was hosted by the Department of Theatre and Dance at Colorado University Boulder for the Fall Semester 2021. Her artistic research project Tempestries: Textiles, Tactility & the Climate Emergency was focused on the ways movement and textiles shape a sense of place within an Irish context. Interweaving textile art, choreography, environmental science and creative writing the project will focus on R&D for a fully realised work in Ireland in 2023.

An exhibition of The Knitting Map (2005) at the Berman Museum of Art in Pennsylvania (Jun – Nov 2021) was a conceptual predecessor of this work, framed for 2021 as a tempestry (textile documenting weather patterns). Jools was awarded a Creative Residency at the B2 Center for Media, Arts, and Performance, part of the Atlas Institute as part of her Fulbright research. She also worked with colleagues in the new Center for Creative Climate Communication and Behaviour Change (C3BC), as well as Inside the Greenhouse and the Unstable Design Lab. She also directed CU students in the short play Love Out Of The Ruins by Zoë Svendson for a Climate Cabaret as part of Climate Change Theatre Action 2021.