If successful, I will use the Dover Prize to deepen the next phase of my project Poiesis of Weathering, culminating in a research-informed, participatory workshop delivered in Darlington. The participatory, day-long event, Radical Self-Compassion: Sharing Personal Archives Through Performance and Assemblage Art invites participants to explore themes of embodied memory, care, and resilience through movement, assemblage (3D sculptural art making), and storytelling through personal archives.
The funding will support my enrollment in the Authentic Movement and Therapeutic Presence module with IBMT (2025–2026), 2025 – 2026. This trauma-informed training will strengthen my facilitation practice and directly feed into the workshop’s delivery. The session will integrate somatic techniques with assemblage arts using found and repurposed materials, encouraging participants to create personal sculptural performance pieces from items connected to memory, identity, or healing. It will be inclusive, gentle, and structured around safety, expression, and reflection.
Alongside this, I’ll undertake a two-year comparative study of Embodied Spirit, Conscious Earth (Linda Hartley) and The Gelede Spectacle (Babatunde Lawal) to examine the links between somatic practice, Yoruba ritual performance, and climate/social justice. This theoretical grounding will deepen the integrity and cultural context of my approach.
The project will culminate in a post-workshop exhibition and discussion forum—offering participants a platform to share their work and reflections, and to invite wider community dialogue.
Budget summary:
IBMT tuition: £1,170
Core texts: £51
Travel & accommodation: £900
Artist fees (research & delivery): £4,350
Workshop costs (materials, venue hire, refreshments): £1,650
Post-workshop exhibition & online forum (including planning, hosting, documentation): £500
Contingency: £1,029.45
The Dover Prize would provide vital space to consolidate and expand my practice, supporting long-term engagement and delivering a powerful, community-rooted experience in Darlington that blends art, movement, memory, through a transdisciplinary lens.
I will deliver a performance and movement-based workshop in Darlington that invites participants to explore personal experiences through assemblage artworks, personal archives and embodied gestures. Radical Self-Compassion creates a safe, participatory space where individuals can reflect on lived experiences and express them through ritual and creative form.
A version of the workshop is currently being developed through Vivid Projects’ Vivid Lab programme.
While that iteration focuses on performance, storytelling, and material practice, it does not include the therapeutic and somatic frameworks that IBMT training offers. In May 2025, I took part in an Introduction to Authentic Movement retreat, which introduced the mover-witness dynamic, central to my evolving methodology.
The Dover Prize would support the next phase, introducing therapeutic movement, embodied witnessing, and mindful connection. The Darlington workshop will carry this expanded research forward, and culminate in a full-day, accessible session. Participants will also be invited to share their processes and outcomes through a small public exhibition, with a follow-up gathering to reflect and build community.
By sharing this next phase of the work with Darlington, the project offers a meaningful and timely contribution to the town’s growing arts ecology, one that blends embodied research, care-led facilitation, and contemporary participatory practice.
I am a multidisciplinary artist and independent researcher with over 30 years of creative practice and two decades of facilitation experience. My work explores the intersections of ancestral memory, ritual performance, and decolonial theory through assemblage, sculpture, storytelling, augmented reality, and sound. I focus on embodied emotions, and archives, where personal experience and spiritual presence meet cultural aesthetics. My current project Poiesis of Weathering emerged through an Arts Council England DYCP award and explores the transformational potential of ritual, mythology, and voice-responsive AI. The work was successfully presented to a small professional audience. I am now evolving this into a performance-supported workshop format: Personal Archives Through Performance and Assemblage Art, being developed further through Vivid Projects’ Vivid Lab research programme. Recent exhibitions include WOCAA: Resonance (198 Contemporary Arts & Learning), Bring Your Light (curated by Chila Burman at Bow Arts), and Traces of the Earth (Lapworth Museum of Geology). My work has also been acquired by Bruntwood following the 12-Months Residency and by the University of Winchester for Our Lady of Climate Justice (2023), a commissioned painting exploring Afro-Realism and religious iconography through the lens of climate justice. From 2022–2024, I was the lead artist and member of Colectiva Feeling the Field, where I developed an artist-led, participatory methodology drawing on body-mapping (cuerpo-territorio) to explore how female-presenting researchers experience and navigate gender-based violence in fieldwork. The framework was informed by participant dialogue and academic sources introduced by the group, which I translated into practice using my facilitation expertise.
I hold a First-Class BA (Hons) in Black Studies from Birmingham City University (2020). While not a visual arts degree by name, it critically informs my creative approach by grounding it in cultural theory, critical engagement, decolonial methodology, and social justice. This academic foundation has deepened my engagement with identity, representation, and historical narrative, key themes in my practice.
Alongside this, I have over two decades of sustained training and practice in visual and applied arts. This includes early studies in photography (Kensington & Chelsea College, 1991), screenwriting and media practice (Birkbeck University, 1999), and DV Film Production (Raindance, 2002). I continued to refine my practice through an immersive documentary with B3 media and IDFA Amsterdam (2008).
More recently, I’ve expanded my digital skills through artist residencies and labs: experimenting with 3D scanning at STEAMhouse (2022), working with Birmingham Museum’s Natural Science Collection in Cut, Copy, Remix (2022), and developing immersive storytelling using volumetric video and Adobe Aero (2023). These experiences directly inform the interdisciplinary, digitally engaged nature of my current visual arts practice.
Together, my academic background and extensive training form a self-directed and practice-led education in the visual arts that spans analogue, digital, and immersive media.
Yes. I received an Arts Council England DYCP Award (2022) to develop Poiesis of Weathering, a multidisciplinary project combining sculpture, performance, and augmented reality. I was also awarded the Women of Colour Art Award (2023), which recognises the systemic barriers faced by artists of colour.
Additional support includes:
a-n Time, Space, Money Award (2022)
BBC/ABI Bollywood Shorts Award (£20,000, 2005)
Awards for All for Treasure Your History (£10,000, 2008)
Private funding Planarama Father and Baby | Young People’s Film (£10,000, 2009)
Sydenham Film Club community film award (£3,000, 2010)
I have also been selected for several competitive artist residencies, including:
Artist in Residence, VR Spot at Stryx Gallery (2022)
Artist in Residence with Black Art Forum and Lapworth Museum of Geology (2022)
Bruntwood Artist Residency (2020)
Kijkruimte, Amsterdam (2012)
These grants and residencies have supported the development of both solo and collaborative projects across film, sculpture, performance, and digital media. They reflect a long-standing commitment to experimental, socially engaged, and interdisciplinary practice.
Yes. I have consistently generated and delivered self-initiated projects that combine community engagement with creative innovation. Most notably, I created and continue to evolve the Radical Self-Compassion: Sharing Personal Archives Through Performance and Assemblage Art, which integrates assemblage, movement, and personal storytelling.
Previously, I founded the Sydenham Film Club (2010), a community-led cinema project, and led the Treasure Your History intergenerational arts programme (2008), after setting up a community interest organisation to secure funding. Both projects supported access to storytelling for marginalised voices.
I also develop speculative installations independently, such as Break ∀way State and SYN4SYS. Both are still in development and combine painting, immersive space and archival inquiry.
Yes. I have been commissioned by:
University of Winchester (2023) to produce Our Lady of Climate Justice, an Afro-Realist icon reflecting on climate and racial equity.
Bruntwood (2020) for the Hymns installation – however this was never delivered due to Covid.
Bruntwood (2020) acquired portrait work into Bruntwood’s collection following my Grand Union and Bruntwood Residency (2019)
Lapworth Museum of Geology (2022) for a research-led residency
198 Contemporary Arts & Learning (2023) and Bow Arts (2023) for curated exhibitions
Tate Liverpool (2018) as part of Swop Shop
These commissions span visual art, installation, and participatory practice.
Yes. Two public acquisitions include:
Our Lady of Climate Justice (2023) by the University of Winchester
A series of portraits acquired by Bruntwood, developed through the 12-months Residency
Yes.
Luncheon Magazine, Issue 19 (2025), in Scenes from a Fictional Play.
Empath & Risk (2020) Welcome to England film screening & Talk
Red Earth Collective (2021) In Conversation | Windrush Generation
Parallel State (2020) Breakaway State
New Art West Midlands (2019)
No, I am not currently represented by a gallery.
Yes
Traces of the Earth, Lapworth Museum of Geology (2022)
VR Spot Residency, Stryx Gallery (2021)
12 Months Residency, Grand Union & Bruntwood (2020–21)
Kijkruimte, Amsterdam (2012)
Email: joy@joycetreasure.co.uk
Address: 47 Sunnydene Street, London, SE26 4ER, GB
Local Authority: Lewisham, London
