Marion Orme Page Regional Creative Fellowships
Artists, writers, dancers, performers and musicians in regional Victoria can explore the Library's collections or respond to the Library site. These regional Fellowships offer the opportunity to create new work in any medium.
The fellowships include:
- $15,000 funding
- desk space at the Library for 12 months
- access to collections and Library staff expertise.
The funding is based on 3 months of work in the Library, either continuous or broken up over the year.
2024 recipients
Dr Amaara Raheem: Residency Practices – A Field Guide For Artists In Residence
Amaara is writing a book on artists in residence programs, exploring how the coming together of artists from different cultures can offer an alternate history of art. Amaara aims to research 19th-century artist colonies in Melbourne to understand their role in shaping Melbourne's art identity and their impact on British colonial settlement.
With a decade of experience in artists in residence practices and a doctoral background, the fellowship will allow them to focus on writing and publishing their book Residency Practices: A Field Guide For Artists In Residence (working title). This book is timely and critical in that the COVID-19 global pandemic, the Voice to Parliament referendum, and the ongoing climate crisis ask us, in different ways, to deeply (re)consider what it is to 'reside' in Oceania.
Amaara's approach to the book will be as a choreographer, performer, writer, woman of colour, and an Asian immigrant to Australia. They will weave together history, memoir, and creative practice.
Christie Nieman: The Margarets
Author Christie Nieman will research and write the first draft of her second adult literary novel, The Margarets (working title). Christie will use the Library's collections and materials to research the lives and onboard conditions of female convicts. She will also use the pirate-themed pulp literature (specifically Penny Dreadfuls) of 1800s London and British Colonial Australia.
Christie Nieman is a novelist and essayist living in Bendigo (Dja Dja Wurrung country). Her work crosses the literary-popular divide and is often about women, social structures and human relationships with the environment. Her work has been shortlisted for the Victorian and NSW Premier's Literary Awards and won the YA Davitt Award and CBCA Honour Book Award.
About Marion Orme Page
A generous donation from the Marion Orme Page bequest supports these fellowships.
Marion Orme McPherson Page (1918 to 2015) was the only child of Lady Sidney and Sir Clive McPherson. Her father was a prominent pastoralist, businessman and advisor to former Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies. Marion was a successful businesswoman and generous philanthropist. She completed studies in Law and Commerce at the University of Melbourne during the 1930s and 1940s and became the first articled woman at Mallesons Solicitors in 1941.
She served as an officer with the Women's Auxiliary Australian Airforce (1944 to 47). In 1953, she was appointed as private secretary to Lady Violet Brooks, the wife of Sir Dallas Brooks, Governor of Victoria (1949 to 1963) and Divisional Commander-in-Chief of the Australian Red Cross Victoria (1949 to 1963).
The Marion Page Archive is held in the State Collection, enriching the Library's diversity of stories and deepening our understanding of women's contributions to history.
We acknowledge the support of Regional Arts Victoria.
Previous fellows
Learn more about the inspiring projects undertaken by past and present fellows in our fellows gallery.
- 2022: Dr Fayen Ke-Xiao d'Evie with the project Celestial Roots, which responded thematically and aesthetically to a handwritten journal from 1866 by Chinese miner Ah Sing Jong, who lived on the Central Victorian goldfields, the original copy of which is in the State Library collection.
- 2022: Alison Wong with the project A Long Walk, which saw her travel over 400kms from Robe, South Australia, to the Victorian goldfields, writing a literary memoir/long-form lyric essay reflecting on her own experience, interwoven with the experience of about 14,000 Chinese who, to avoid the Colonial Government of Victoria's £10 poll tax, walked the route in the 1850s.