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Art exhibition exploring climate change and community opens in Cork city
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- Created by 2,000 Cork women and artists from the USA, the exhibition transforms climate data into a striking visual record of change.
- Twenty years after its creation, The Knitting Map joins The Tempestry Project in exploring how local stories reflect a global climate crisis.
Art, climate science and community unite in an exhibition exploring our changing climate. Mapping Climate Change: The Knitting Map, created by 2,000 Cork women, and The Tempestry Project from the USA respond to the climate crisis at a critical time of uncertainty.
Presented by University College Cork (UCC), Mapping Climate Change opened at 1 Horgan’s Quay on 4 November and will run until 6 December 2025. Admission is free.
This year also marks the 20th anniversary of The Knitting Map, a celebrated Cork city artwork commissioned in 2005 during Cork’s tenure as European Capital of Culture. Recognised as one of Cork’s fifty most important artworks, The Knitting Map was created collaboratively by more than 2,000 people – largely women from Cork’s north side. Weather data determined yarn colours and movement in the city stitch variations, producing a vast map of the city’s weather and movement over a single year.
Mapping Climate Change reveals how weather and environment shape identity and place. By translating climate data into colour and stitch, these works transform complex climate information into patterns of beauty, resilience, and community.
Exhibited alongside it, The Tempestry Project, a US-based community art initiative, transforms daily temperature data into knitted or crocheted panels, each representing a specific year and place. Together, the two projects weave a shared story of climate awareness across decades and continents, linking art, science, and collective action.
Professor Jools Gilson, Professor of Creative Practice at UCC College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, said: “Like the natural world and our place in it, textiles can be both vulnerable and resilient. Produced more than a decade apart, The Knitting Map and The Tempestry Project recount evolving stories of climate awareness. In conversation these artworks integrate science and art, technology and handwork, authorship and collaboration to visualise a developing public consciousness of environmental justice issues.”
Professor Brian Ó Gallachóir, Associate Vice-President of Sustainability at UCC, said: “Mapping Climate Change highlights how creativity and collaboration can help us understand complex environmental challenges. These works transform climate data into human stories and experiences, reminding us that sustainability isn’t just measured in numbers and policies, but in the ways people and communities connect with and respond to climate change.”
The exhibition is presented with the generous support of BAM and Clarendon Property Developers, with funding from Research Ireland and University College Cork.
Exhibition details:
- Opening Reception: Tuesday, 4 November 2025, 6pm – Horgan’s Quay 1, Waterfront Square, Cork City.
- Exhibition Dates: 4 November – 6 December 2025.
- Opening Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri 12–4pm; Thur 4–7pm; Sat 10am–4pm (Closed Sun/Mon).
- Admission: Free. All are welcome.