Emily Nicholl

Emily Nicholl is a Scottish circus and multidisciplinary artist interested in creation in the places between disciplines. With a background in politics, environmental education, her wider work and artistic practice is interested in our varying relationships with the outdoors. She creates often through improvisation, on the ground or in the air, and in considering her role as artist, neighbour, friend, citizen, she is interested in working with a focus on collaboration, conversation and mutual aid. She aims to declutter ablism from a fluctuating relationship with her own body and has an underlying health condition and a new photography practice.

Emily co-devised and performed internationally with Ockham's Razor's award winning Tipping Point - winner of the Total Theatre Award for Best Circus 2016. She was on the creative team for their new intergenerational show (currently touring) This Time.

Her experience ranges from ensemble contemporary circus to children’s dance theatre, from intimate duo pieces to large scale outdoor circus shows, working as performer, dancer, rigger, consultant, producer, stage manager, engagement facilitator, creative assistant, teacher, photographer. She collaborates with a wide variety of people and is open to new conversations across and within disicplines. Credits include work with: all female group Mimbre, Dior, Ockham's Razor, NoFitState Circus, Nathan Johnston, Laura Fisher, Ellen Renton, Roberto Magro, Greta MacMillan EEA, the RSC, The Royal Lyceum Theatre and Peut Etre Theatre.

As producer she has worked with the critically acclaimed multi awarding winning venue The #Pianodrome and is a recipient of a Jerwood Arts Bursary. She facilitated community engagement for gardens and community spaces around Scotland for Alice Mary Cooper's award winning carbon light touring show The Bush in 2022. She was project coordinator for SCALP's activist legal support work during COP26 in 2021.

Emily is currently a Jerwood Fellow with Imaginate and worked in collabaoration with Ellen Renton on an immersive live experience for blind and visually impaired children. She is a recipient of the Creative Fund from Puppet Animation Scotland funding research including a residency at The Work Room in Spring 2022.

Her photography and practice research work includes collaborations with Laura Fisher around the notion of the 'embodied observer', making photographs as a conversation with others and with landscape, and a new correspondence project with writer Joe Rizzo Naudi where they are working between photography, words and audio description.


Residencies