ABOUT ME
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Louise Gillman is a multi-talented artist working in a variety of fields.
Louise uses her pirate nickname "Happy Lou" to share her
creativity on instagram
Louise grew up in England in a Franco- English family, and enjoyed an imaginative childhood in the magical countryside of East Sussex.
In 2012, she moved to Germany, where she did a Bachelors degree in Cultural Anthropology (in German) at the University of Freiburg, with the secondary subject Scandinavian Studies.
A six month Erasmus exchange in the Swedish city of Umea allowed Louise to strengthen her foundations in the Swedish language, start playing with Ye Banished Privateers, and introduced her to the Swedish folk traditions of the "Spelmanslag."
Parallel to her studies, Louise co-founded the folk band Saitenstreich, of which she was also co-manager. The band enjoyed considerable success, playing hundreds of concerts in Switzerland, Germany and all the way up to North Sweden between 2013 and 2020.
Having been drawn to performance and public speaking from an early age, with an avid interest in stories and history, it seemed natural that Louise should turn to tour-guiding. Her multilingual capabilities and years of experience on stages made it an easy transition from student and musician to freelancer tour-guide and musician.
Louise has been living in the border triangle between Freiburg (DE), Basel (CH) and Colmar (FR) for over 10 years now, and has many fun stories and anecdotes in her backpack, as well as a considerable knowledge of the history of the region.
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A useful tool for a tour-guide will always be a love of reading. For Louise this was also instrumental in her path to working in the literary field, as well as her connection to the Jewish Museum of Switzerland, where she has been doing freelance work since her work placement in 2019.
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Louise has always loved drawing, painting, and generally creating beautiful colourful things and arrangements. In recent years, she has experimented with a variety of styles and materials, and with using art as a means of emotional expression. Her long-term goal is to create more larger art-works suitable for a collaborative exhibition in combination with poetry, music and performance, thus combining all of her artistic interests.
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