The National Library is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2024 Creative Arts Fellowships.

The Creative Arts Fellowships support writers and artists to spend four weeks at the Library researching and developing a new artistic concept, artwork or body of work inspired or informed by the collections.

Recipients

2024 Creative Arts Fellowship for Australian Writing, supported by the Ray Mathew and Eva Kollsman Trust

Dr Jo Langdon

‘That / is history. This / is only poetry’*: poetic biographies and explorations of aviatrix histories

This project will create new poems based on the NLA’s archival sources on aeronautics and Australian aviatrixes, looking at the historical and biographical records of women pilots including Millicent Bryant, Maude ‘Lores’ Bonney, Freda Thompson, Nancy Bird-Walton and Robin Miller Dicks (aka 'The Sugarbird Lady’). These poems will create a textual 'mosaic' of voices and histories, and complete a new poetry manuscript that in part reimagines the lives of American aeronaut sisters Millie and Essie Viola, who toured Australasian colonies during the 1890s.

2024 Creative Arts Fellowship, supported by the Friends of the National Library of Australia

Ms Celia Craig

Complete Accord: Miriam Hyde  

Dr Miriam Hyde OBE, AO, is often remembered for her contributions to the Australian music education scene, as composer of exam music and patron of competitions. But she began as a teenage piano virtuoso, taking London by storm while playing her own piano concerti and others with England's major orchestras and conductors, while still a student. Through this Creative Fellowship, Craig will examine original manuscripts and create new performing editions to develop a new program for her Tarrawatta Trio, bringing Miriam Hyde's unique character and virtuosity to greater public attention.

Thank you

The Library would like to acknowledge the Ray Mathew and Eva Kollsman Trust and the Friends of the National Library of Australia for supporting the Creative Arts Fellowship program. We also thank all applicants for the 2024 program, noting a strong field of applications.

About

The Creative Arts Fellowships offer $10,000 to support practising writers and artists to develop new work creatively using or inspired by the Library’s collections. The Fellowships offer artists a unique opportunity to immerse themselves in the collections, including music, maps, rare books or ephemera, or original sources, such as pictures, manuscripts, oral histories and folklore recordings.

At the end of their residency, Fellows will present their findings in free public lectures.