If I am successful in receiving the £10,000 bursary, the funding will be used to develop and present my solo exhibition ‘Layers of Memory’, which explores identity, mental health, and the emotional geography of lived spaces. The exhibition will feature eleven mixed-media works, each representing a home address I have lived in, with ‘Moral Compass’ as the anchor piece. The funding would cover essential costs including materials (collage, textiles, paint, and found objects), professional framing, venue hire, transport, documentation, and the development of an accessible public programme including workshops and artist talks.
This bursary would significantly move my practice forward by enabling me to realise my first full solo exhibition, allowing for deeper experimentation with scale, texture, and narrative in a way that hasn’t been possible due to financial constraints. I plan to integrate poetry, legal documents, and spiritual references alongside visual materials to continue pushing the boundary between visual art and lived testimony. It would allow me to work with a mentor to refine my curatorial decisions and strengthen my presentation skills, particularly when sharing work rooted in personal and traumatic experience.
The award would also support engagement with local audiences—especially those with lived experience of displacement, abuse, or mental health struggles—through participatory workshops and safe, reflective spaces for dialogue. Long term, I hope this project will position me to secure future opportunities including national touring, publication, and collaborations with organisations that support outsider and underrepresented voices in contemporary art.
Receiving this funding would not just allow me to make new work—it would validate the personal and collective histories my practice carries, and help me grow as both an artist and facilitator of meaningful conversation.
My work centres on lived experience, memory, and identity—often through the lens of trauma, mental health, and working-class resilience. These themes resonate deeply with the social fabric of towns like Darlington, where industrial histories, shifting communities, and untold personal narratives continue to shape local identity. By bringing Layers of Memory to Darlington, I would not only showcase art rooted in personal truth but also create space for local voices to connect, reflect, and be heard.
Through workshops and community engagement, I would collaborate with local residents to explore their own stories using accessible materials like textiles, collage, and poetry—encouraging creative expression beyond traditional art spaces. The exhibition and programme would open conversations around overlooked histories and emotional geographies, contributing to Darlington’s cultural life in a way that is inclusive, participatory, and healing.
This opportunity would help raise the profile of Darlington as a place where raw, honest, and socially relevant art is both made and shared. My approach—grounded in authenticity and connection—would offer something unique and powerful to the area’s creative landscape, helping to build bridges between lived experience and artistic expression.
I am an interdisciplinary artist based in Birmingham working primarily with collage, mixed media, oil paint, and autobiographical narrative. My practice investigates how memory, mental health, and place influence personal identity, with a focus on working-class experience, domestic spaces, and the lasting impact of social displacement. I use art as a way of confronting, holding, and reimagining the truths that often go unspoken. Drawing on my own lived experience, I work with layering—of materials, images, text, and stories—as both a visual technique and a metaphor for the complexity of selfhood. My ongoing body of work, Layers of Self: Reconstructing Memory & Identity, is a 12-part mixed-media series inspired by the twelve addresses I have lived in. Each piece explores the emotional landscape of that home, reflecting wider themes such as housing insecurity, grief, faith, resilience, and the invisibility often experienced within marginalised lives. I incorporate legal documents, poetry, stitching, copper thread, and found materials, blending the tactile with the psychological. Influenced by artists like Willem van Genk, my work resists neat narratives, instead embracing the messiness of memory and the layering of time. It is a form of visual testimony—at once a reconstruction and a reclaiming. I was featured as Artist of the Month by Outside In, a platform that champions artists facing barriers to the art world. This recognition helped raise the profile of my practice and connected me to a wider community of artists working with lived experience. I have previously exhibited in group shows with Outside In and am currently developing my first solo exhibition, Layers of Memory. My work aims to open up conversations around truth, trauma, and belonging—offering viewers not only a window into my world but a mirror for their own. Through each piece, I seek to create space for complexity, connection, and quiet resistance.
Currently, I am studying for a degree with Open University, BA Hons Arts and Humanities, and will be entering my third year in September.
Yes, I am currently developing a self-created professional opportunity through an artist-led Zoom workshop titled ‘Unravelling Your Story: Exploring Memory and Identity’ using Mixed Media inspired by Van Genk. This initiative has grown directly from my involvement with Outside In and my completion of the Step Up: Curating and Exhibiting course. The course deepened my understanding of how to develop and present creative projects professionally, and how to create accessible, inclusive opportunities that reflect personal artistic practice.
My own creative response to Willem van Genk’s work was a deeply personal exploration of narrative and identity, inspiring me to design a workshop that supports others in doing the same. Experimenting with mixed media pushed me outside my usual practice and revealed the power of connecting art with personal experience.
Building on this, I have planned a six-week artist-led series, preceded by a two-hour taster workshop. In July, I will be conducting this two-hour workshop in conjunction with Outside In, offering participants a meaningful introduction to the process of reflecting, writing, and creating through their own stories. This opportunity combines my skills as a writer, artist, and facilitator and is shaped by the confidence and knowledge I gained through Outside In.
https://rawvision.com/products/issue-102
https://outsidein.org.uk/exhibition/maps-and-minds-a-journey-with-willem-van-genk/
https://outsidein.org.uk/news/meet-the-artists-environments-exhibition-2019-week-two/
https://outsidein.org.uk/news/unlocked-exhibition-information-page/
https://outsidein.org.uk/news/artist-of-the-month/artist-of-the-month-carla-cannon/
Please see the links above which range from a write up in Raw Vision April 2025 to online exhibitions.
Email: carlasatchwell@hotmail.co.uk
Address: 133 Freasley Road, Shard End, Birmingham, West Midlands, B34 7QH, GB
Local Authority: Birmingham
