This opportunity is crucial for me to strategise the sustainability of rural arts culture, public practice, and placemaking, with a view to embed this research across the wider sector. It will strengthen key connections and improve my work/life balance whilst also establishing a new body of work as a result, with original plans for public projects for Darlington in 2027.
I currently work in intensive, unmanageable patterns to sustain myself financially, which impacts both my work quality and mental health. My lack of mainstream education fuels imposter syndrome, leading to overwork and burnout. This essential award will build on early-career momentum & form effective supports for my practice, whilst developing new works and research illustrating how rural culture impacts communities and land use.
The bursary will fund 24 months of studio research, development and delivery, as well as material costs for a new series of site-specific installations and sculptures to be sited in Darlington and its surroundings. It will also assist in the costs of site visits to connect with local people and places to inform the works. Prioritising slow practice recognises the importance of duration when working rurally and with cultures of place. This will also allow space for other freelance working commitments that may take place during this time, allowing this research to have active effects within wider programmes.
After this project, I hope to become a national representative of high-quality, unique participatory public works. I will be working towards further creative opportunities and have embedded more sustainable freelance working practice to ensure career longevity. I will gain confidence in the authenticity of my approach and feel a sense of belonging in prestigious arts settings, especially when advocating for creative access. By the end of the programme, I will have developed a new body of work for public display, sustaining my viability in the landscape and contributing to the emerging dialogue that non-urban centres are breeding grounds for high quality public arts. Despite overcoming significant barriers, I am committed to establishing a sustainable freelance career in participatory public arts and becoming a representative in the field.
Community voices and the narratives of place are that which allow me to develop a sculptural language, tying commodities back to people and the lands that made them. Cross-disciplinary collaboration is central to my practice. My relationship-driven model of engagement allows me to interact with diverse audiences, as demonstrated in my work with farmers, foresters, stonemasons, and sailors.
I believe it’s our collective duty to bridge the access gap in contemporary arts and reconnect with communities to explore how our skills can support change. A funded opportunity for cross-pollinated research, reflection and development ensures this knowledge becomes accessible and exciting for rural communities—and for other artists passionate about this work.
I grew up in rural North Yorkshire and lacked creative access throughout my education (which was largely undertaken from a specialist education facility due to illness.) This has resulted in my specialist interest in rural culture and its capacity to connect people to their landscapes and one another, an approach that I would be keen to explore in Darlington. Now is an integral time for public work to be valued alongside high arts & I want to be a pioneer of this crucial dialogue for artists in rural spaces.
Maya Rose Edwards is a participatory public sculptor based between Yorkshire and Scotland. They have worked in participatory settings for 5+ years creating ambitious public interventions with communities and their landscapes. In 2023, completing the Mount Stuart Artists Residency; their project TWOFOLD, explored the connection between queer/rural identities on the Isle of Bute, resulting in a series of permanent site-specific works. They are currently undertaking a placemaking commission along Stranraer’s abandoned waterfront, co-designing an ecological-focussed future landmark with communities along a post-industrial coastline. They are the recipient of the RSA New Contemporaries Selection 2023 for which they received the Chalmers Award, Steven Palmer Travel Bursary 2023, UK New Artists 2025, Shape Arts x Baltic residency cohort 2024-25 and have just installed an interactive public artwork as a part of the 13th edition of Sculpture in the City, London. In 2025, they have been commissioned by the Alasdair Grey Archive, Cove Park and Meadow Arts to create public facing works to be displayed later this year. My practice spans sculpture, public space, and participatory art, creating poetic encounters that inspire reflection and acts of resistance for those who experience them. For 5+ years, I have developed ambitious public artworks in participatory settings, exploring placemaking, culture, landscape, and speculative futures. Working site-specifically, I employ hunter-gatherer tactics to compose new narratives of seemingly familiar spaces through interventions, live art, text, and sculpture. I am deeply drawn to rural culture and its ability to connect communities with their landscapes, fostering a sense of belonging and shared identity. I believe that Agriculture and industry are an extension to the legacy of land art, a sculptural form of protest. My work engages with queer ecologies and rural intersections, following a model of “social ecology” that examines the interplay between ecological and social issues. Viewing complex ecosystems and ecological processes as poetic frameworks, I explore how they can help us better understand ourselves and our interrelations within wider cultural systems. Through hybrid presentations, live artworks, and participatory experiences, I create active social ecologies and public poetics with communities and their landscapes across the UK.
I graduated from The Glasgow School of Art in 2021, with a First Class Undergraduate Degree in Sculpture and Environmental Art.
I have received a number of professional grants and award during my emerging career, the most recent of which being a DYCP grant from Arts Council England to support my ongoing research into rural creative placemaking.
I was awarded Eco Arts funding and The Stephen Palmer Travel Bursary in 2023-4 to support my artist-led participatory project exploring blanket bog habitats with children and young people
I was shortlisted for the BALTIC x Shape Arts Emergent Cohort 2024-5, for which I received 6 months of intensive mentoring and vital access provisions to support my practice.
Following my selection for the Royal Scottish Academy’s New Contemporaries exhibition 2023, I received the prestigious Chalmers Bursary award for my work ‘Tumbleweed’.
In 2022, I was awarded the Creative Scotland Youth Arts Bursary to support my transition into full-time freelance working.
In 2018, I was selected to exhibit my work ‘Index of Matter’ in the OXO Tower in London for the Origins Creative Arts Festival and was awarded ‘Best Young Practitioner.’
Collaborator Seamus Killick and I have been running an artist-led participatory project ‘Blanket Bog’ since November 2022. Over the project we have conducted in-depth creative research into the natural, cultural and historic significance of peat bogs. We have undertaken site visits across Scotland to develop this, connecting with local communities and cross-disciplinary researchers including archaeologists, scientists, conservationists, and historians. Informed by the unique ecologies and climate criticality of Scottish bogland, we have built a participatory arts project to explore wildland restoration and potential collective futures working in collaboration with young people.
We have secured several small funding awards to allow us to develop our immersive public installation which has toured schools, community gardens, festivals and carnivals on a variety of scales. We have recently connected with grassroots artist led social action project Rumpus Rooms, who are commissioning us to deliver an entire programme of Summer School youth activity relating to peatland folklore and conservation. Socially engaged film and arts charity RIG Arts are also programming a year of workshops from the project, focussing the connection between landscape and mental health in the West of Scotland.
In 2022, I installed a public sculpture on The Isle of Bute with support from the Mount Stuart Trust.
Since November 2023, I have been working in Stranraer on a large-scale public regeneration project to co-design a future waterfront following the loss of ferry industry in 2011. I have been working in connection with The Stove Network, local council and communities and the building work is set to commence in Spring 2026 with ongoing creative engagement.
I have recently been commissioned by the Alasdair Grey Archives and the Edwin Morgan Trust to create a public artwork responding to the literary works of both artists and their impact on the city of Glasgow, (to be installed later this Summer.)
I have also been commissioned by Cove Park and Kilcreggan Arts and Heritage Trust to create a permanent landmark sculpture to mark the Highland Boundary Fault and geological divergence of the Southern Uplands. (To be installed later this Summer.)
I have an upcoming commission with Meadow Arts in Winter/Spring 2026 to create a live artwork in collaboration with 3 towns along the English/Welsh border referencing the ancient local earthwork of ‘Offa’s Dyke’, to be later exhibited in Hay Castle.
My work has featured in the following notable publications, journals and programmes:
– Dazed online 2018
– Desperate Times online 2020
– The Times Newspaper (review) 2021
– Glasgow School of Art Graduate Showcase 2021
– Trebuchet Magazine (review) 2021
– Glasgow Artist Moving Image Theatre 2022
– Isle of Bute News 2022-3
– The Skinny Mag 2023
– Scottish Field (full feature) 2023
– ITV News 2024 (full ‘Harbour’ feature) 2023
– Time Out Magazine (review) 2024
– ITV News (interview) 2024
– Londonist Magazine (review) 2024
– Royal Academy Art (Social media recommendation) 2025
I have been awarded the following funded residency programmes:
– Inverclyde Culture Collective Residency, RIG Arts 2021-22
– Creative Scotland Youth Arts Bursary, Rumpus Rooms 2022
– EVOLVE residency, Paisley 2022
– Socially engaged residency, Mount Stuart Trust, 2022-3
– Project Ability, 2023
– Ecological research residency, Timespan Museum, 2023
– Waterfront Regeneration (Harbour Project), Stranraer, 2023-(ongoing)
– MASSIA Development Residency, Estonia, 2023
– Skyboat residency, The Hugo Burge Foundation, 2024
– Placemaking Residency, Workhouse Union Ireland, 2024
– Arcadia Development Residency, 2024
– UK New Artist Residency 2025
– The Level Centre Residency, 2025 (upcoming)
– Meadow Arts 2025-6 (upcoming)
Email: maya.edwards.15@outlook.com
Address: flat 3/1, 72 kingarth street, Glasgow, Glasgow, G42 7RW, GB
Local Authority: Glasgow City Council
