Home > Get involved > Fellowships > Creative Fellowships

Creative Fellowships

Artists, writers, dancers, performers and musicians – now’s your chance to go wild with the Library’s collections or in response to our site! 

Our 2 Creative Fellows will have the chance to create new work in any medium. Write a book, create an artwork or plan an immersive experience for the Library – it’s up to you.

We’d love to hear from individuals practising in any art form, including:

  • visual or digital arts
  • dance
  • performance
  • music or composition
  • writing
  • research.

The fellowships include:

  • $15,000 funding
  • desk space at the Library for 12 months
  • access to collections and Library staff expertise.

Funding is based on approximately 3 months of work in the Library. This can be either continuous or broken up over the year, and you’ll have access to your office for the full 12 months.

2025 recipients

Mojo Ruiz de Luzuriaga (Mo'Ju) – KAPWA

At the heart of Mojo’s fellowship project is ‘KAPWA’: a philosophy of special importance to Filipino culture and psychology. Mojo’s research will focus on pre-colonial Filipino beliefs and traditions, particularly 'Batok’ or tattoing, shamanism, creation mythologies and the roles of gender non-conforming people within the culture. The fellowship will inspire a new piece of work combining photography of Filipinx receiving Batok, and new, instrumental compositions.

Mo'Ju is a First Nations (Wiradyuri), second generation (Filipinx), third gender (non-binary), third culture artist, whose inter-disciplinary practise has spanned 19 years.  Working across many mediums, they are primarily known for their work as a songwriter, touring and recording artist, and their focus has always been on creating highly conceptual bodies of work. Throughout their career they have gained critical, commercial and cultural influence, most notably with their albums Oro, Plata, Mata (2023) and Native Tongue (2018).

Avni Dauti and Rebecca Dauti – Faed

Faed is a research project engaging with Deaf history from the mid-19th to early 20th century. It will focus on how Deaf lives and Deaf-authored knowledge appear (or not) within the State Collection. The project takes its name from Arthur James Wilson – pseudonym ‘Faed’ – a deaf writer, cyclist and inventor credited with inventing the wing mirror. His invention serves as inspiration for the project’s aim to look forward and backward simultaneously. Avni and Rebecca will create a lecture performance in Auslan featuring an original signed text, and images from the Library’s collection.

Avni and Rebecca Dauti are artists working in moving-image and collaborative research. They live on Bunurong land in Australia. Their practice engages with Deaf history, language and cultural memory through ongoing dialogue with Deaf communities internationally. Their work has been shown at the Wellcome Collection (London), National Museum of Art (Lithuania), Federation Square (Naarm/Melbourne) and Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow), as well as at international film festivals and conferences.

Previous recipients

Learn more about the inspiring projects undertaken by past and present fellows in our fellows gallery.

  • 2024:Grace Vanilau with the project O le Toe 'Aumaiga: A Reclamation,an exploration of writings, journals, and images from the Victoria State Library archives that depict Fafine Sāmoa – Samoan women.
  • 2024:Lawrence Leung with the project Melbourne Gothic: A Séance At The State Library Victoria, an immersive historical lecture and performance that examines 19th-century Melbourne's Spiritualism craze.
  • 2022: Dr Sofi Basseghi with the project The Road to Pairidaeza, an examination of Persian literature, miniature paintings and manuscripts in the Library's collection.
  • 2022: Veisinia Tonga with the project The Darkness which will examine the accounts of Tongan contact with missionaries to illuminate pre-contact life in Tonga.
  • View previous Creative Fellows from 2003 to 2019.