The Challenge

Irish people consume more than twice the EU average of fast fashion. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that every Irish person consumes 53kg of new textiles per year; the European average is 26kg (Walsh 2024). The fashion industry is also responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions, more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. Artistic Research offers distinctive strategies and methodologies to meet this contemporary textile moment and the crisis in our relationship with the things we wear and wrap ourselves in. How might we model strategies of textile sustainability through pedagogies of community engagement, learning, handmaking and creative practice?

This project addressed SDG 4 – Quality Education through two strands of distinctive pedagogy - the exhibition of Mapping Climate Change at the Art Museum, West Virginia University (WVU) and the collaboration of students from UCC, MTU and WVU; SDG 5 - Gender Equality through its focus on the gendered histories of hand textile practices in WV and Ireland and its critical focus on The Knitting Map (part of Mapping Climate Change); SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption & Production in combination with SDG 13 – Climate Action through practices of textile recycling, re-purposing, mending and processes of collaborative making and gifting.

The Research

Framed and informed by the Mapping Climate Change exhibition at the Art Museum, West Virginia (Aug – Dec 2024), Textiles, Sustainability & the Local developed experimental pedagogies in Textile Art and Sustainability by bringing together Fashion students from West Virginia University (WVU), Theatre students from UCC and Textile Art students from Crawford College of Art (MTU) to engage in collaborative art and performance making. These related to local textile practices (Appalachian, Irish and others) and the ways in which textiles are “carriers of narrative, culture and social history” (Áine Kavanagh CCAD).

The focus on sustainability introduced students to the impact of textile industries and grassroots activism around thrifting / upcycling, circular economies, the mending movement and the ‘wear your wardrobe’ campaigns. All textiles used in the exhibition and performance were second-hand, recycled, borrowed or from ‘deadstock.’ Students also made individual ‘Sharing Squares’ which were gifted between the two countries with hand-written letters and then developed into collaborative larger scale textiles. Jools Gilson was Artist in Residence at the Art Museum WV in Oct 2024 and met all the WVU students. A final performance and installation took place in the Granary Theatre Cork in Dec 2024.

The Impact

Ireland has a particular and largely invisible crisis in our consumption of fast fashion and its contribution to global warming. This is an emergency of imagination as well as education / action. Textiles, Sustainability & the Local modeled imaginative strategies for engaging with textiles as repositories of meaning through community hand-making and performance. Across the registers of exhibition, artist residency, gallery outreach, student learning, and student performance / installation, it explored connecting the local and familial through international collaboration as critical counterpoint to fast fashion consumption.

This project champions Artistic Research as a relevant, progressive and innovative methodology for engaging with major societal challenges. It does so by asserting creative arts practice as embodied and affective processes of knowledge generation, uniquely positioned to impact participant learners, gallery visitors / theatre audiences through felt connection.

Gallery Exhibition / Artist Residency, Mapping Climate Change: The Knitting Map & The Tempestry Project, 19 Aug – 20 Dec 2024

Exceptional education programme at the Art Museum WVU animated public engagement and student learning over four months through arts practice / climate workshops, talks and tours. During her residency, Jools Gilson taught WVU Museum Studies and Fashion classes, gave an Artist Lecture and hosted Textile Tales - a clothing swap and movement workshop. This work embeds The Knitting Map as an artwork that asks and enables questions about textiles, climate and community through its scale, meteorology, duration and amount of knitters. 

Undergraduate Module - Textiles, Sustainability & the Local

The accompanying U/G module in Textiles, Sustainability & the Local had a distinctive impact on participating students through collaborative connection and devising a powerful public performance / installation called PIECEWORK. Performances focused on clothing and joy, women / families in rural Ireland / Appalachia and the weight of textile waste.

The outcome of the US Presidential election had a strong impact on the WVU students and coincided with making a larger textile to return to Ireland from the Irish ‘Sharing Squares.’ The atmosphere in the studio was heavy with shock, despair and sadness. The students decided to channel their emotions into the project and see it as an opportunity to give voice to their despair.

‘The West Virginia Salute’ is a quilted banner that marries craft and rebellion, echoing generations of voices from the past while speaking loudly to the present of desire for a sustainable textile culture. The bold shape of an extended middle finger was instantly recognisable but carried layered meaning in this piece. This gesture, a symbol of anger, defiance, disrespect, frustration and sometimes hopelessness, is used by West Virginians as a playful way to describe the shape of the state. Here, the gesture transforms from a playful symbol to a powerful statement of resistance and resilience.

Textiles, Sustainability & the Local received national and international media coverage - an interview with Jools Gilson on Newstalk / Moncrieff (Tue 5 Nov, 2024); an article in the Irish Examiner (O’Sullivan Vallig 2024) and coverage on The Wardrobe Crisis podcast with Claire Press (Wed 5 Feb, 2025)

Jools Gilson and Pamela Hardesty (Director of Textiles at Crawford College of Art & Design, MTU) are writing a visual article about Textiles, Sustainability & the Local for Textile: The Journal of Cloth & Culture.

Textiles, Sustainability & the Local addresses UCC’s strategic goals in multiple and resonant ways: Research & Innovation 1.1 impact mapping, cross-disciplinary collaboration (Theatre, Visual Art, Fashion), 1.4 collaborative engaged research and 1.5 creative contributions from performance and composition. Student Success 2.1 connecting professional arts practice as a constituent of Artistic Research with the scholarship of teaching and learning. Global Engagement 3.3 internationalise our curriculum / research. Our Place, Our Footprint 5.1 embed sustainability into education & research.

More Information

Jools Gilson jgilson@ucc.ie

Interview from WVU Exhibition (Video)

Wardrobe Crisis at 10.34 (Podcast)

Irish Examiner article (Print)

Newstalk Interview (Radio)

Mapping Climate Change Exhibition (Web)

The Knitting Map (Web)

Archive RTÉ Footage (TV)

Research Partners: Pamela Hardesty (Textiles, MTU) & Beth Shorrock (Fashion, West Virginia University).

“Upstairs in the Bright Gallery The Knitting Map fills the entire gallery, falling from a corner of the room and moving in swirls and rivulets towards visitors. It is quiet and vast. When we take elementary schoolchildren upstairs to the exhibition they ‘Wow!’ and ‘Amaaazing!’ their way around its edges. As they quieten they ask ‘how all those ladies got together and did that?’ calling me Ma’am as they do so.”

- Professor Jools Gilson

Banner Image: Hand sewn and woven ‘Sharing Squares’ made by UCC, MTU & West Virginia University Students