Person to Person: 'We need radical hope, connection, community, joy in a time of uncertainty'

TELL us about yourself;

My name is Jools Gilson - I’m an artist & educator based in UCC. I head up the Theatre Department and love teaching. I’m training second-year BA students at the moment - we’re focusing on performance skills, with lots of work on breath, voice and presence. We also go and see theatre and dance as part of this course so the students combine studio practice with reading and seeing other people perform.

As part of our work as academics at UCC (I’m Professor of Creative Practice) we also do research, and for me this involves my arts practice. One current research project involves the exhibition Mapping Climate Change opening at Horgan’s Quay (open until December 6). This project is focused on arts and sustainability. Scientists are beginning to understand that the ways in which artists work and create offer different approaches that connect to people differently. We’re working with some wonderful artists who are exploring collaborations with UCC Climate scientists and we’re also working with local textile and sustainability community groups. We’re interested in the possibility of an arts and sustainability festival for Cork City – so we’re exploring what people want, what else has been done locally in this area, and how this might work.

I’m so delighted that The Knitting Map will be exhibited in Cork City during its 20th anniversary year as part of the Mapping Climate Change exhibition. This work was knitting the weather in community two decades ago as an act of feminist and revolutionary meaning-making. It did so with humour and connection as hundreds and hundreds of our female Cork Elders translated rain and sunshine and gales in their hands through knitting, a skill that was culturally dismissed as unimportant and without import. But here it is, and my goodness does it have presence and impact and heft.

My own background is anchored in dance performance and choreography, even as I also work in galleries and with writing. For a period when my children were small, I also made radio documentaries and drama (RTÉ & BBC), because I couldn’t travel. Through all of this work I’ve retained a singular sense of wanting to make enchanting and beautiful spaces, but also a vein of wickedry and playfulness. Such playfulness is present as I train young theatre artists – an ability to see such strategies as serious and often political work. Being able to be playful expands their repertory of presence and possibility, but it also allows us to stay with difficulty and find alternative strategies and these are skills the world needs. We need radical hope, connection, community, joy in a time of uncertainty and in my work and my teaching and research I hope to make space for these worlds.

Where were you born?

Swiss Alps (I wish) Actually, North Kent, UK.

Where do you live?

St Luke’s, Cork (honest)

Family?

Gratefully, I have one of those – married to the Italian and mother to the young people who both just left home to go to college.

Best friend?

Beth Osnes who lives in Boulder, Colorado, which makes meeting for coffee tricky.

Earliest childhood memory?

Crouching under the hood of an upended doll’s pram in my parents’ garden in the rain, temporarily forgotten.

Person you most admire? Beth Osnes

Person who most irritates you?

Auntie Janice.

Where was your most memorable holiday?

Tralispean, West Cork, June 2025. Gorgeous successions of friends and family, sea swims, night kayaking, mad dancing in the kitchen and laughing till we ached.

Favourite TV programme?

Pernille (Netflix). If you can get over the quick-talking and the equally quick subtitles, this Norwegian series is a brilliantly funny depiction of modern womanhood, with all its multi-tasking and tangles of work, parenting, joy and heartbreak. I miss it.

Favourite radio show?

BBC World Service Podcast. Genuine world news in half an hour. About as much as I can take, but a must-listen.

Your signature dish if cooking?

Goan Korma with chickpeas and cauliflower from those Happy Pear lads. It’s totally yum.

Favourite restaurant?

Naturally Nourished on Railway Street in Cork City. Seriously divine soups and OMG blondies.

Last book you read?

Savage Her Reply by Deirdre Sullivan with beautiful illustrations by Karen Vaughan. A feminist reimagining of The Children of Lir - what’s not to love? It isn’t pretty, but it is haunting and utterly compelling.

Best book you read?

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver I love Barbara Kingsolver. Apart from being an amazing writer, she’s sassy, brave, clever, runs a farm and knits up a storm. Demon Copperhead is set in her home territory of Virginia, and depicts rural poverty and opioid addiction that has savaged working-class communities across Appalachia. Sounds grim and it is, but also riveting and beautiful.

Last album/CD/download you bought?

Hit Me Hard And Soft by Billie Eilish.

Favourite song?

Boys Don’t Cry by The Cure.

One person you would like to see in concert?

Billie Eilish (I know, I didn’t get a ticket).

Do you have a pet?

I don’t.

Morning person or night owl?

Morning person.

Your proudest moment?

Becoming a mum.

Spendthrift or saver?

A bit of both.

Name one thing you would improve in your area in which you live?

A buddy scheme for newcomers or families to get to know a family, share a meal, have a chat, in ways that feel safe and supported. We are city centre in St. Luke’s and getting trendier by the minute, but there’s loneliness out there. I can hear it.

What makes you happy?

Seeing my students learn. Laughing with my kids. Walking wild with my husband.

How would you like to be remembered?

As a great baker and a demon at Qwirkle.

What else are you up to at the moment?

Planting bulbs and roasting some peppers for lunch.

• Mapping Climate Change: The Knitting Map and The Tempestry Project continues at 1 Horgan’s Quay until December 6. Presented by University College Cork, the exhibition transforms real climate data into large-scale textile artworks, offering a visual record of change and community resilience. The exhibition marks the 20th anniversary of The Knitting Map, a celebrated Cork artwork created in 2005 by over 2,000 local women. Weather data from that year shaped the yarn colours and stitches, creating a vast knitted map of the city’s weather and daily life. It’s being shown alongside The Tempestry Project, a US-based community art initiative that records local climate over time. Admission is free.