Bancroft awarded 2024 Lady Cutler Award
Bronwyn Bancroft is the recipient of the 2024 Lady Cutler Award, a biennial award presented by the New South Wales branch of the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) for distinguished service to children’s literature.
A proud Bundjalung Woman, author and artist, Bancroft began illustrating children’s books in the early 1990s, with artwork for Diana Kidd’s The Fat and Juicy Place (A&R), which was shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year and won the Australian Multicultural Children’s Book Award. Bancroft was the Australian finalist for the Ezra Jack Keats Award for Excellence in Children’s Book Illustration in 1994. Bancroft received the Dromkeen Medal for her contribution to Australian literature and has been nominated for international children’s literature awards, including at the Hans Christian Andersen Awards and for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.
Said the CBCA NSW branch: ‘Bronwyn’s contribution to Aboriginal children’s literature has been immense. Bronwyn has been a trailblazer in the field of Australian literature for over 30 years and has contributed significantly to representation for Aboriginal storytellers.’
Bancroft said: ‘The main reason I took up illustrating and writing children’s books was because when I was growing up in Tenterfield there were no books about Aboriginal people by Aboriginal people. This has always stayed with me and has driven me to continuously produce and assist in providing an Aboriginal perspective for Australian children.’
The CBCA NSW branch said Bancroft was ‘passionate about her culture, her family, equity in education, conservation of the world and protection of artists’ rights’.
‘Through her books, Bronwyn communicates her social conscience, her family’s history and her deep sense of custodianship for the environment by depicting the beauty of the Australian landscape and its precious flora and fauna,’ said the organisation. The branch added that Bancroft ‘believes it is important to bestow and share intergenerational knowledge to assist others to be able to share their stories and contribute to further representation for Aboriginal storytellers in the industry’.
As well as working frequently with emerging artists as part of the Rising Tide Camp workshop series, Bancroft is one of 10 founding members of Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Co-operative (established in 1987) and has been the co-operative’s volunteer senior strategist since 2009. Bancroft achieved her doctorate in 2018, and she was awarded the inaugural NSW Aboriginal Creative Fellowship at the State Library of NSW in 2021.
The Lady Cutler Award will be presented on 9 November at the Aspire and Celebrate event in the Writing NSW building in Lilyfield, NSW.
Gail Erskine was the recipient of the 2022 Lady Cutler Award.
Category: Awards Local news
