Creative Victoria announces VicArts recipients

Several literary projects and writers have been included among the recipients in the latest round of Creative Victoria’s VicArts Grants.

The program will provide over $1.5 million in funding for 62 creative projects by independent artists and arts organisations in Victoria.

The recipients include:

• Auspicious Arts Projects on behalf of Marian Blythe ($11,398), to present the 2019 Homecooked Comics Festival, which showcases local comic makers, graphic novelists and comic publishers.
• Maxine Beneba Clarke ($20,000), to develop Hood, a novel set in Footscray that ‘tells a story of love and culture clash, triumph and tragedy’.
• Adam Ford ($8,351), for a spoken-word performance exploring human interactions with landscape, developed in collaboration with experts in colonial history, geology and local Indigenous culture.
• Going Down Swinging ($35,000), to develop a year-long program of activities across print, online and podcasts.
• Samya (Hella) Ibrahim ($15,800), to fund the ongoing publication of Djed Press, an online publication showcasing work by people of colour.
• Koorreen Enterprises Pty Ltd ($11,000), for Digger J Jones Two: Holy Snapping Goose Poo, a young adult book by Richard J Frankland about the Vietnam War and the Gunditjmara Wars at the time of colonisation.
• Michelle Leber—Kalang Retreat ($11,210), for a series of residencies and workshops for three emerging Indigenous Victorian poets at Kalang Retreat in Somers, Victoria.
• Janine Mikosza ($15,456), for Homesickness, a creative nonfiction work that explores the experiences of people with complex post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of childhood family violence.
• Progressive Broadcasting Service Cooperative Limited ($11,000), to create a large-format picture book titled PBS: 40 Years of Music, which will be compiled by past and present PBS volunteers and staff.
• Elvis Richardson ($14,000), to develop Countess: Women Count in the Art World (2008-2018), a book that gathers and uses data to explore gender bias in the visual arts.
• RMIT University on behalf of Jessica Wilkinson ($17,425), to publish four issues of a nonfiction poetry journal, Rabbit, as well as four collections of poetry by emerging Australian poets for the ‘Rabbit Poets’ series.
• Scale Free Network ($19,848), to develop The Forest in the Tree, a picture book that will be told from the perspective of a fungal spore living in the soil.

For more information, and to see all the recipients, click here.

Category: Local news