Initiated in 2019, Luke Jerram set up and funded the annual Dreamtime Fellowship to support artists in his home city, Bristol.
The Dreamtime Fellowship 2026, hosted by Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio for the first time, will offer space, time, mentoring, financial support and resources for a mid-career Bristol-based artist to take their practice to the next level. The Fellowship will run from January to December 2026 and will include an informal sharing towards the end of the year.
Watershed and the Jerram Foundation are excited to introduce our Dreamtime Fellow Gemma Paintin, whose practice spans live art, sound, social practice and work for public space. The Fellowship will run throughout 2026, with Gemma investigating how resonance and collective rhythm might help us understand the overlapping personal, political and ecological crises that shape contemporary life. Gemma is a Bristol-based artist. Trained in theatre, she began as a performance maker in the mid-2000s before expanding her work into more hybrid, undefinable forms. She has deep roots in Bristol’s artist-led communities, and as co-director of internationally recognised duo Action Hero, she has created and toured work worldwide. Alongside her artistic practice, Gemma also works as a dramaturg, voiceover artist, educator and mentor. In 2024, she won an Off West End Award for her performance in The Talent.
Gemma Paintin says: “I have been yearning for space to expand my creative practice into new territories, and when I saw the Dreamtime Fellowship, I knew this would be the perfect context to imagine, dream and create. I’m so excited to get started, and to open my practice to new thinking and new forms with the support of the Jerram Foundation and Watershed.”
Luke Jerram says: “After the support I was given by Pervasive Media Studio at the beginning of my own career, it’s wonderful to be able to return the favour and support the next generation of artists through the Dreamtime Fellowship. I’m delighted that Gemma has been awarded the fellowship and I really look forward to supporting her this coming year to help develop her practice.”
The Dreamtime Fellow for 2024-25 was Alexis Over-Papatzaneteas, a multidisciplinary artist working between sculpture, public art and book-making, who is interested in the growing proliferation of data and how data visualisation effects our societies knowledge of topics of socio-economic importance. This interview marks the end of Alexis’ tenure as Dreamtime Fellow, and celebrates the acquisition of his new book, 349, as part of the British Library‘s artist book collection.
In previous years the Dreamtime Fellowship was hosted at Spike Island and was awarded to:
2024/25 Alexis Over-Papatzaneteas.
2023/24 Lou Baker
2022/23 Rosie Baylis
2021/22 Dolores McGurran
2019/20 Izzy Mooney
