Watergate Gateways Bursary aims to connect with artists in the early stages of their careers and/or with established artists with the seed of a new idea. We see this as an investment in our community and an important connection to the development of new work across all artistic disciplines.
Gateways Bursary Recipients 2026
Sarah Joan K (@sarah.joan_) is a multi-disciplinary artist and theatre director from Kilkenny. A first-class honours graduate of Drama and Sociology at Trinity College Dublin, she has performed in leading Irish venues including the Peacock Theatre, Project Arts Centre, IMMA, and Visual Carlow. She is director of the emerging collective Hello Operator, with whom she co-created and directed ‘Trout’ at The Butler Gallery (2025). Sarah's directing work has also featured at Smock Alley, The Samuel Beckett Theatre, and Kilkenny Arts Festival, alongside workshops delivered at DCU and The Lir Academy.
In 2023, Sarah was selected for the year-long Lasta Young Curators programme. She subsequently received support from Kilkenny Arts Office for the ‘Breaking the Patterns’ Visual Arts residency in Lisbon, culminating in a group exhibition at NowHere, Lisboa (2025). Photography and video-based work has been exhibited in Gallery X, Dublin (Íova Collective, 'The Four Elements,' 2026) and with Cult Collective for Culture Night ('Remedy/Resistance,' Market Cross, 2025). Sarah most recently completed a studio residency at The Tea Houses Kilkenny, supported by Kilkenny Arts Office and ArtLinks, which resulted in a studio sharing, and events in collaboration with Cult Collective for their inaugural Festival of Art and Experimentation.
Sarah is a long-term collaborator with Kilkenny-based Asylum Productions. Following community participation in ‘Bridge Street Will Be’ (2015), she completed an assistant directing internship on ‘The Local’ (2023). Between 2025 and 2026, she has worked as Assistant Director on ‘The Alice Project’, which will be staged for this year's Kilkenny Arts Festival.
Sarah is delighted to receive the 2026/2027 Gateways Bursary, which she will use to develop a new piece of theatre designed with a youth-engagement strand, inspired and informed by the Youth Theatre Ireland accredited Facilitation Training.
Jeffrey Gormly is a Kilkenny native working in theatre, dance and participation. Since his first opportunity as Assistant Director to Garry Hynes at the Abby theatre, he has performed at IMMA, Under the Radar NYC, Athens Festival, Hayward Gallery London, Siamsa Tire, Kilkenny Arts Festival and many more. He has been commissioned by The Abbey Theatre, CREATE, Dance Ireland, Daghdha Dance Co, and Clonmel Junction Festival and funded by the Arts Council, Culture Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, Research Council of Ireland, ESB Funding for Generations, Creative Ireland. His awards include Dublin Corporation Drama Award, Google Adopt-a-Startup, Bank of Ireland Startup of the Year (Shortlisted), Social Entrepreneurs Ireland. He has numerous publications, and is an Artistic Researcher at Duke University, USA. Jeffrey facilitates workshops with Watergate Collective open to anyone interested in getting involved in theatre.
Eleanor Walsh (she/her) is a performer, writer, and an autism and disability advocate. Recent performance credits include Grace (Graffiti Theatre Company), Unveiled (Disrupt Disability Arts Festival/Neurofestivity), Yellow (Jody O’Neill), Daughter of God (Asylum Productions), and What I (Don't) Know About Autism (Abbey Theatre). Eleanor recently served as Dramaturg and Creative Enabler on Stimphony, a Cork Midsummer Festival commission which premiered in June 2026. She will be performing in Chronically Hopeful with Musici Ireland in Dublin Fringe Festival this September.
Eleanor also consults on Relaxed Performance and autistic representation and inclusion, and is featured in "Be Inspired! Young Irish People Changing the World" by Sarah Webb, published by O'Brien Press.
Kate Brosnan is an actor and writer from Kilkenny, working across both stage and screen. Most recently she wrapped filming the supporting lead in feature film, Necessary Woman, produced by Western Front Studios. She plays the lead in short film, BEAN, which will premier at this years Galway Film Fleadh. Last year she joined the cast of RTÉ’s Fair City, playing Phoebe Casey for six weeks, as well as playing Tanya in APC Studios & Magamedia's Obituary. Kate played opposite actress Miriam Margoyles in RTÉ documentary, Lady Gregory: Ireland’s First Social Media Influencer. Her other screen credits include the music videos for both Cardinals (I Like You) and Barnburner (See/Sleep), as well as short films Constitution Hill, Amoeba, and Vixen.
Her stage credits include the Dublin Fringe Festival (Hand of God), Galway Theatre Festival (But We’re Right), The State Opera Theatre in Bulgaria (The Plague), The Samuel Beckett Theatre (No Go) and touring productions with Gift Horse Theatre Company (Twelfth Night, Tess.)With the support of this bursary, Kate will develop a new piece with her theatre company, Bad Things Theatre. Bad Things Theatre is an independent Irish-German collective creating research-led political theatre, exploring how sociopolitical issues manifest in human stories. They create politically-engaged, original pieces that aims to reflect how the world is, not how it should be. This new piece, The Man Who Stole The Moon, will be a hybrid between of theatre and opera, exploring gendered violence and collective silence"
Patrick McGlynn (AKA Dr. Mindflip) creates unique musical moments at the intersection of imagination, technology, space, and story. You can often find his work in curious places: he has designed elaborate sonic experiences for an ethereal boat journey across a lake, an aristocratic owl's funeral carriage, a time-travelling library, a giant musical toaster, a haunted synthesizer, malevolent stop-motion starlings, and a meditative self-playing music box.
His work has been featured internationally at festivals including New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Sound & Music Computing, Brazilian Computer Music Symposium, Leeds Sonic Arts Festival, Rewire, Big Bang, Iterations, Stendhal Festival, Sunflowerfest, as well as Irish festivals such as Electric Picnic, Dublin Fringe, Kilkenny Arts, Carlow Arts, Limerick Fringe, Clifden Arts, Irish Sound, Science, & Technology Convocation, Scene + Heard, Something in the Water, Castlepalooza, Vantastival, Arcadian Field, and many more.
His goal as an artist to create imaginative, rich, and empathetic sonic worlds for others to explore - realised through a combination of carefully-designed performance systems and playful improvisations.
Patrick is currently working on a new album, presenting a series of live-coding workshops as part of the AKA festival's inaugural Artists in Motion programme, and creating bespoke synthesizer performance tools inspired by games, nature, and aleatory music composition.