Bothy Project in partnership with the Cairngorms National Park Authority are pleased to announce Robyn Woolston as the 2026 recipient of the Cairngorms 2030 Residency.
In April, Robyn will undertake a seven-day residency at Glenesk Folk Museum after being selected from an open call for artistic practitioners based in the Cairngorms National Park.
Applicants were asked to develop a work that responded to Dùthchas, a Gaelic concept which encompasses ideas of kinship, heritage and connections between nature, people and place. Robyn intends to explore how Dùthchas manifests within a changing landscape, shaped by the pressures of hotter, drier summers and intense rainfall.
She will engage with the museum’s archive and undertake fieldwork to explore Glen Esk’s climate and biodiversity, uncovering hidden histories, soundscapes and community reflections. Robyn will also receive training in Gaelic language and heritage as part of the project’s commitment to the concept of Dùthchas.
Robyn Woolston: “My residency with Bothy Project, Glenesk Folk Museum and the Cairngorms National Park Authority could not have come at a better, more pertinent time. I’m humbled to be able to think about climate change from the perspective of a deeply resonant concept such as Dùthchas – bringing belonging, stewardship, kinship and the environment into focus within the National Park.”
Robyn is interested in hearing from those who live in the Glen Esk area who would like to share their observations and experience of the changing landscape. Please email Bothy Project in the first instance.
The residency is designed to offer time and space for the artist to consider their practice and develop their project, which will be shared with an audience later in 2026. Robyn will receive a fee in line with Scottish Artist’s Union rates, production budget and support with travel costs. The residency is part of the Cairngorms National Park Authority’s Community Arts and Culture project, one of 20 projects that make up the Cairngorms 2030 programme, made possible by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, with thanks to National Lottery players.
Previous recipients of the Cairngorms 2030 Residency are Sarah Hobbs and David Lintern (2025) and in 2022, Bothy Project and the Cairngorms National Park Authority ran a pilot residency with selected artist Naomi Mcintosh.
Robyn Woolston is an environmental artist whose practice engages with installation, photography, moving image and print. Spanning disciplines and sectors, whilst working at the thresholds of material, memory and ecology, her work traces the afterlives of what’s left behind. From plastic fragments and industrial remnants to overlooked detritus, she explores the material and symbolic weight of what we both revere and discard.
Following the sudden loss of her mother, her MA by Research (2011) turned towards emotional residues, exploring how grief inhabits the body and reshapes contexts. This seminal chapter became a bridge between physical and emotional ‘discards’, connecting seasonal and life patterns, land-use, cultural rituals and Rites of Passage.
In 2017, she was appointed the inaugural Artist in Residence at the Highlanders’ Museum (Queen’s Own Highlanders Collection) at Fort George, Inverness. Her installation, Summer Has Been Turned to Winter by the Guns, integrated military artefacts and community-generated materials to reflect on collective memory and military impacts. Between 2019 and 2022, her residency with Fort Worth Contemporary Arts and the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT) explored archival collections and the interdependence of extractive industries and the natural world.
Woolston explores archives as regenerative spaces, capable of questioning environmental futures (as well as histories) in a climate-impacted world.
Above image: Portrait of Robyn Woolston. Image courtesy of the artist.
Header image 1: Robyn Woolston, Yours in Extraction, Fort Worth Contemporary Arts, 2023
Header image 2: Robyn Woolston, Biothink 4, 2022
Header image 3: Robyn Woolston, Turning the Tide, residency in Gdańsk, Poland, 2024
