Marley Starskey Butler

Marley Starskey Butler is a Birmingham based interdisciplinary artist and qualified social worker. Their practice interweaves storytelling, memory, and emotional landscapes to explore how people make meaning of personal and collective narratives within systems of care. Grounded in lived professional and familial experience in child protection, fostering, adoption, and mental health, their work centres on themes of well-being, social justice, and human rights. These experiences inform both the content and methodology of their practice, positioning it at an intersection of art and social care.

Marley is working with Eastside Projects as an Incidental Artist supported by a Wheatley Fellowship from Birmingham School of Arts, and following a placement at Beacon Family Services developed the exhibition Compensare: For the Swallows We Weigh. Recent exhibitions and projects include Thirty-Six, Midlands Art Centre, Birmingham (2024); Hospital Rooms – Sandwell CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) (2023/4); Dwelling, Eagle Works Studios, Wolverhampton (2024); Reclaiming Narratives: Voices from the College of Medicine and Health, Barber Institute of Fine Arts (2024/25); Reflector, The New Art Gallery Walsall (2024/25), Blast Creative Network, The Wolverhampton School of Art, Wolverhampton (2023); Picturing High Streets, FORMAT International Photography Festival, Derby (2023); Freedom, National Justice Museum, Nottingham (2023); Portrait of Britain, British Journal of Photography, Nationwide – JCDecaux Screen (2022); East Meets West, FORMAT International Photography Festival, Derby (2021).