This week’s opportunities

Grants and funding

Create NSW Project and Multi-year funding

Five new Project and Multi-year funding rounds are now open for individual creative practitioners and arts and cultural organisations in NSW. The newly-designed funding categories, part of Create NSW’s transformed Arts and Cultural Funding Program (ACFP), include Creative Nations, Next Steps, Creative Steps, Cultural Access and Multi-year funding. Grant amounts vary from $10,000 to $100,000 for the Project funding categories, and between $100,000 and $600,000 for the Multi-year funding categories.
All application rounds close 2 December; learn more and apply.

Professional development

Brown Falconer + Guildhouse Artist in Residence (SA)

The Brown Falconer Artist in Residence allows a South Australian visual art, craft and design practitioner to undertake a six-month artist-led research period and presentation of new work. The latter will be accompanied by a launch event during History Festival 2025 hosted by Brown Falconer Architects (Adelaide Studio) and Guildhouse.
Applications close 25 November; learn more and apply.

2025 Urban Landscape Prize and Studio Scholarship (Vic)

The Urbach will be awarded to a Victoria-based artist working in the field of Australian landscape painting. The awarded artist will receive a $5000 cash prize and a scholarship stipend of $5000 to support them as they undertake the three-month, non-residential scholarship at Shepparton Art Museum’s on-site artist studio from 1 May to 31 July 2025. In addition to the first prize, two runners-up will each be awarded a $2500 prize in recognition of their time and commitment in developing their applications.
Applications open from 8 November to 3 March 2025; learn more.

Want more? Visit our Opportunities page for more open competitions, prizes, EOIs and call-outs.

This week’s winners

Visual arts

Scott Price took home $5000 and a solo exhibition opportunity as the winner of WA’s Emerging Artist Award. Price’s winning piece was created from a trip to Walyunga National park, where he dragged the paper through the river water and mud so that the land leaves an imprint on it as an act of collaborating with the ecology of the area.

2024 Emerging Artist Award-winner Scott Price standing with his winning artwork, ‘Radial mapping of seasonal pool furthest inland extending from Avon River to Walyunga Pool, March-April 2024’. Photo: Supplied.

Adelaide Fringe has selected a new artwork for its 2025 festival – Are We Nearly There Yet by John Pedder speaks to Adelaide Fringe’s vision and is the first woodblock print to win the competition in its over 60-year history. Pedder says, “It’s a real honour to be selected as the Adelaide Fringe 2025 poster winner. I love fringe festivals and how inclusive they are for all artists. For me, there’s a connection with these characters and the Fringe poster competition brief of ‘One or All and All For One’ and the print reflects the many arts disciplines that visitors will experience at Australia’s biggest arts festival.” As the winner, Pedder receives $10,000 in prize money, the opportunity to hold an exhibition during the 2025 Adelaide Fringe and his artwork will feature on the promotional material of the festival across South Australia.

Lori Pensini has taken out the top gong for Australia’s most recognised portrait prize for women, the Portia Geach Memorial Award 2024. She takes home $30,000 for her portrait that explores conversations with animals and draws from her encounters with wildlife. The judging panel says, “Lori Pensini’s work The Conversation #3 is a beautifully composed painting that delivers, with exceptional skill, an alluring sense of connection between human and animal subjects. The painting sensitively conveys the artist’s desire to explore knowledge systems of the non-human world, suggesting how these might influence an understanding our environments as cohabited spaces. The intimacy of this shared portrait may reflect the artist’s own experience, but also poses a timely and larger question of how we view the world at a time of human-made environmental crisis. Highly commended artists were Deirdre Bean for her painting, Rembrandt and Trevor (I can hear you) and Liz Stute with her self-portrait Melbourne’s old rattler.”

Illawarra-based artist Nicole Kelly has won the 2024 Evelyn Chapman Art Award with Dance of March Flies, an expressive oil painting depicting a coastal landscape. The award provides a $50,000 scholarship to Kelly, who will use it to conduct research, at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, on the Nordic tradition of painting, particularly dark realism, symbolism and psychological space within the Nordic landscapes.

The 26th annual Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship has been awarded to six artists. Sydney artist Adele Warner will receive a three-month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, as well as $50,000 in funding to further her art education while in Europe. Warner’s practice reflects the zeitgeist of the digital age, patchworking ideas and images from her life and memory with those found on Reddit, Wikimedia Commons and Instagram. Five additional artists were also awarded $10,000 and a two-week residency at Shark Island Kangaroo Valley, NSW. They are: Tommy Carman, Solomon Karmel-Shann, Scout Milsome, Lorna Quinn and Elle Wickens.

Six regional winners have been selected from across 140 countries for the M&C Saatchi Group and Saatchi Gallery’s Art for Change Prize. Australian artist Jo Mellor won in the Australia and New Zealand region, tackling the theme ‘Tomorrow’ing: Visions of a Better Future’. Mellor will go on to compete for the grand prize of £10,000 (AU$19,753), with the winner to be announced at the exhibition launch at Saatchi Gallery, London, on 28 November.

The 2024 Windmill Trust Scholarship for regional NSW artists has been awarded to Wiradjuri woman and multidisciplinary artist, Karla Dickens. A graduate from the National Art School, Dickens has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, with works represented in a number of significant national public collections. The Windmill Trust Scholarship will enable Dickens to create new works for an exhibition at Wollongong Art Gallery in April 2025. Dickens says, “Being awarded this year’s Windmill Trust Scholarship in memory of Penny Meagher is a sweet lifeline for me at the moment. There are very few artists in Australia not feeling the pressures of the current financial crisis. I am deeply grateful to receive the scholarship, which will allow a new series of artworks to come into the world.”

Performing arts

The 2024 Frank Van Straten Fellowship has been awarded to opera and cabaret performer Ali McGregor, who will investigate the life and career of 1880s Australian actress Nellie Stewart. The Fellowship provides McGregor with a $15,000 grant and the opportunity to research and develop projects that explore the Australian Performing Arts Collection. In 1885, Stewart starred in the first Australian production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado and, later, her name became synonymous with Sweet Nell of Old Drury, in which she played Nell Gwynne. McGregor says, “Many things about her career resonated with me, from singing high opera and then moving into light operatic comedy, to her experience of grappling with the choice to try and make it overseas or to stay at home and build a career as a working mother in the arts. I felt a very strong desire to follow the metaphorical breadcrumbs from her life to my own.” McGregor aims to resurrect Stewart’s legacy with the help of the Fellowship.

Read: WAAPA to benefit from $30 million philanthropic partnership

Victorian soprano Anna-Louise Cole has received $25,000 as part of the Dame Heather Begg Memorial Award to support her operatic career and enable her to pursue opportunities in Europe. Cole has performed repertoires across Australia, including the titles roles in Aida and Turandot, both Sieglinde and Brünnhilde in Wagner’s Ring Cycle and Venus in Tannhäuser (Opera Australia). She also sang Lady Macbeth in Macbeth (Opera Queensland). Cole says the opportunity to travel is invaluable, explaining, “Casting decisions are only made by hearing people in person, and the distance from Europe makes it challenging for Australian singers to establish themselves overseas. Opera is an acoustic art form, and they just have to hear your voice. They have to see you perform. And so, it means that trying to build a career over there is tricky. It takes time.”

The 2024 Music Victoria Awards celebrated recipients across multiple categories on Thursday night 24 October. Winners include Gregor for Best Album, RVG as Best Group, Audrey Powne as Best Solo Artist and ZÖJ as winner of Best Regional Act. Good Morning were awarded Best Track for Excalibur and DJ PGZ picked up Best DJ. The list of winners continued with Opelousas (Best Blues Work), Hana & Jessie-Lee’s Bad Habits (Best Country Work), Hybrid Man (Best Electronic Work), Hand to Earth (Best Experimental or Avant-Garde Work), Evan & Mischa (Best Folk Work), Pizza Death (Best Heavy Work), Michelle Nicolle (Best Jazz Work), Gretta Ray (Best Pop Work), FLY BOY JACK (Best Hip Hop Work), JahWise (Best Reggae or Dancehall Work), The Belair Lip Bombs (Best Rock or Punk Work), Tekoa (Best Soul, Funk, R’n’B or Gospel Work), Lauren Coutts (Best Producer) and Cheryl Durongpisitkul (Best Musician). The venue categories winners included Corner Hotel (Best Large Metro Venue), St Kilda Festival (Best Metro Festival), NYE On The Hill (Best Regional Festival), Torquay Hotel (Best Regional Venue Over 50 Gigs), The Sound Doctor (Best Regional Venue Under 50 Gigs) and Northcote Social Club (Best Small Metro Venue). 

The winners of the 2024 Screen Music Awards were announced in a ceremony last night (Tuesday 29 October) by APRA AMCOS and the Australian Guild of Screen Composers (AGSC). Rachel Perkins was named as the winner of the Distinguished Services to the Australian Screen Feature Film Score of the Year was won for the third time by Jed Kurzel for Monkey Man (Kurzel previously picked up the prize for Snowtown and Slow West). The Best Music for Children’s Programming was won by Joff Bush, Jazz D’Arcy, Daniel O’Brien and Joe Twist for Bluey: The Sign. The new Emerging Screen Composer of the Year award was taken out by Alex Olijnyk, while veterans Cezary Skubiszewski and Jan Skubiszewski have created the Best Music for a Television Drama for the mystery drama series High Country, and the award for Best Music for a Television Comedy went to to Michael Yezerski for While the Men Are Away. For all the winners.

Winner of Feature Film Score of the Year, Jed Kurzel. Photo: Lucinda Goodwin.

Writing and publishing

The winners have been announced for The Readings Prize, with Emma Darragh taking out New Australian Fiction with Thanks For Having Me. Chair of judges for the Readings New Australian Fiction Prize, Melinda Houston said that the book is “a fresh, sophisticated take on the ‘bad mother’, following three generations of women who love their daughters, but do not love being parents”. Emily Brewin’s A Way Home took out the Gab Williams Prize with “a raw and authentic story that explores the complexities of forging our own path in the face of adversity,” says Alicia Tu, chair of judges for the Gab Williams Prize. Wurrtoo by Tylissa Elisara and We Didn’t Think It Through by Gary Lonesborough were the Children’s Prize winner and Young Adult Prize winner respectively.

Read: Another glittering award for Melissa Lucashenko, as she takes out the ARA Historical Prize

Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes has won the 2024 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award for የተስፋ ፈተና / Trials of Hope. Written in English and Amharic poetry and prose, this autobiographic work shares Yirga’s journey from boy shepherd in Ethiopia to human rights academic at Curtin University. Woldeyes is a writer, researcher and poet from Lalibela, Ethiopia, who now lives with his wife, writer Rebecca Higgie, in Bentley. Woldeyes says the manuscript’s English narrative was written over two years but the Amharic poems were written across decades, using Ethiopia’s indigenous script (Ge’ez Fidel). “I love crossing multiple worlds and languages with a heart that bleeds with despair, and rejoices with love. Hope is a poetic force that carries me across these boundaries.” Woldeyes receives $15,000, a publishing contract with Fremantle Press and a residency fellowship with the Centre for Stories.

Read: Greek-Australian poet Π.O. wins 2024 Patrick White Literary Award

All

A group of creative and arts leaders will join Shifting the Balance of Leadership Program – Stage 1, an initiative of Diversity Arts Australia, as its inaugural participants. Stage 1 includes accredited leadership training in partnership with TAFE NSW, alongside masterclasses, events and mentoring. The participants include conservator Ali Ibrahim, producer and writer Belinda Jombwe, artist/filmmaker Juan Guillermo Robayo Gómez, multilingual programs artistic director (Think+DO Tank Foundation) Marian Abboud, theatre practitioner Piumi Wijesundara and more.

Mini grants have been awarded to 18 projects through Arts North West’s 2024 Quick Response Micro Grants initiative, offering flexible grants of up to $1000 for independent artists, community groups and arts organisations. Recipients span a variety of artistic disciplines, from traditional Gomeroi weaving by Lorrelle Munro and Kurdish folk music by Shingal Music, to puppet automation by Fiona McDonald and wood artistry by David of Wood We Create. Learn more.

Check out previous Opportunities and Awards wraps for more announcements.



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