Jump to:
This week’s opportunities
Awards and competitions
Share in over $75,000 worth of cash, products and opportunities by entering the Head On Photo Awards, where all entries are judged anonymously to ensure work is selected on merit alone. Finalists are exhibited in print and online during the internationally acclaimed Head On Photo Festival 2025.
Entries close 27 July; learn more and enter.
2025 Alan Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award (Qld)
The AELAA is presented annually to a performing arts professional who has contributed significantly to the industry, often above and beyond the call of duty. The Award is presented by the Actors’ & Entertainers’ Benevolent Fund Queensland.
Nominations close 31 July; learn more and apply.
Sculptures in the Garden 2025 (NSW)
Sculptures in the Garden (SIG), an outdoor sculpture exhibition in regional NSW, is back for its 15th year with founding CEO and artistic director of Sculpture by the Sea, David Handley AM, returning as special guest judge. SIG runs from 11-26 October at Rosby Wines in Mudgee, with more than $55,000 in prizes on offer.
Submissions close 8 August; learn more and submit.
A new biennial award for an outstanding poetry collection translated into English, the Poetry in Translation Prize is open to living poets from around the world, writing in any language other than English. The winners will receive an advance of $5000, to be shared equally between poet and translator, followed by simultaneous publication in Australia and New Zealand with Giramondo, in North America with New Directions, and in the UK and Ireland with Fitzcarraldo Editions.
Submissions open from 15 July to 15 August; learn more.
Commissions
Emerging Playwright Commission (ACT)
Applications are open now for Canberra Youth Theatre’s Emerging Playwright Commission 2025. This nationwide commission offers $17,400 to an emerging playwright aged 16-35 to create a new, full-length work for performers aged 7-25. Two other finalists will also receive $1500 each to support their writing practice.
Applications close 7 July; learn more and apply.
Grants and funding
These project grants support high-quality arts initiatives that benefit regional or remote artists, arts workers, audiences and communities. Projects can span any area of creative practice, including multi-art form or cross-disciplinary work, commencing in 2026. Applicants can request up to $30,000 in funding.
Applications open 1 July to 15 August; learn more.
Callouts
Free NAIDOC Week webinar (online)
As part of NAIDOC Week, the Copyright Agency is hosting a free webinar titled ‘Doing it Right: Respectful Brand Alignment with First Nations Art’ on 9 July from 11am-12pm AEST. Led by Dr Terri Janke, Indigenous lawyer, author of True Tracks, and a leading voice on Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP), the session provides practical guidance for brands seeking to work with First Nations artists.
Registrations now open; learn more and register.
Applications are now open for publishers and booksellers to exhibit at Same Page 2025, the third annual Same Page art book fair, focusing on innovative independent publishers and small-scale local imprints. The fair will be held at Gertrude Contemporary over the weekend of 18-19 October. The bespoke art book fair is a community-oriented event, highlighting the practices of small presses and collective activities in contemporary art publishing.
Applications close 4 July; learn more and apply
Australian literary journal Splinter is inviting First Nations writers from around Australia and the world to submit fiction, non-fiction, poetry or experimental work to its third issue. Both emerging and established writers are welcomed, with the issue to be published in November 2025.
Submissions close 3 August; learn more and submit.
Professional development
LGI Resident Director 2026 (Vic)
Lucy Guerin Inc is inviting Expressions of Interest from Melbourne-based choreographers looking to take their next steps as an artist. The 2026 Resident Director role is a year-long opportunity to develop new work with dedicated support, while gaining insight into the role of an artistic director within a small contemporary dance company. A $12,000 fee plus up to six weeks of full-time access to WXYZ Studios is on offer.
Applications close 23 July; learn more and apply.
Want more? Visit our Opportunities page for more open competitions, prizes, EOIs and call-outs.
This week’s winners
Visual arts
Hayley Millar Baker has been awarded the 2025 Georges Mora Fellowship, which includes a $10,000 grant, a residency at State Library Victoria and one year’s premium membership to the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA). Baker says, “My research focuses on Indigenous hauntology—the ways in which past, present and future converge in the spectral presence of culture, memory and spirituality. This fellowship will allow me to delve deeper into the interplay between horror, Indigenous epistemologies and rematriation, examining how Indigenous narratives of the supernatural resist erasure and assert sovereignty. My work challenges dominant portrayals of Aboriginal spirituality as either mystified or lost to time, instead framing it as an active force in contemporary cultural restoration.”
Sculpture by the Sea has received the Gratias Agit Award in Prague, awarded annually by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic for promoting the “good name of the Czech Republic abroad”. Czech artists have been participating in Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi since 2004, when Václav Fiala was the recipient of the exhibition’s major prize. Since then, over 20 sculptures by Czech artists have been in the Bondi and Cottesloe exhibitions and in 2019, a showcase of eight Czech sculptors and four Slovak sculptors was held to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. Several artworks in the event’s Snowy Valleys Sculpture Trail have received funding support from the Czech Consulate in Sydney. Sculpture by the Sea founding CEO and Artistic Director David Handley was inspired to establish the event while living in Prague in 1994. He first visited the city in early 1990, shortly after the revolution, before living there for two years from 1993.
Performing arts
Emily Wurramara, LEE, Chandler Jewels, Music in Exile and DAWS are among the recipients of the Export Development Fund, which distributed nearly $1 million across 78 projects in its fifth round. The Export Development Fund is a matched funding initiative, designed to elevate emerging, breakthrough and established acts into the international market, while fostering sustainable and thriving careers. Wurramara will be bringing her ARIA-award winning album Nara to international audiences on her Canadian Folk Festival run, while Music in Exile will undertake a global press campaign to support the release of Jutna, a full-length album with an accompanying short film created by musicians with lived experience of migration and displacement working in the Australian music industry. Applications for the next round of the Export Development Fund close on 8 July. Learn more.
In similar news, recipients of the national touring programs, Playing Australia and the Contemporary Music Touring Program have been announced, including Arts on Tour NSW, BlakDance, Dancenorth Australia, Love Your Records, Music in Exile, Mulga Bore Hard Rock, Adelaide Festival Centre and the Sydney Improvised Music Association. The investment of more than $2 million will support 31 projects, and bring live performances to audiences right across Australia, particularly in regional and remote communities. Learn more.
State Library Victoria’s 2025 fellows will share $195,000 in funding, each receiving a dedicated office space at the Library for 12 months and one-on-one support from a specialist librarian to dive into the collection. Recipients include Australian musician Mojo Ruiz de Luzuriaga (Mo’Ju), who will create a new work in celebration of the philosophy central to Filipino culture, KAPWA; Dr Anna McMichael, to create an immersive multimedia project that explores the impact of climate change in Antarctica; Rebecca and Avni Dauti, who are examining how sign language, Deaf-authored knowledge and Deaf perspectives have been collected, recorded or excluded from the Library’s collections; and Louise Crisp, to research and write a long-form eco-poetic text.
Writing and publishing
All
The latest round of grants under the Maritime Museums of Australia Project Support Scheme (MMAPSS) invested $120,000 in 25 projects, ranging from vessel preservation to exhibition development and on-site museology courses. This includes the construction of a traditional Kuridja (bark canoe) by a senior Thaua Elder in order to preserve significant maritime knowledge from the Far South Coast of NSW, and the preventative maintenance of HMAS Gladstone, a decommissioned Fremantle Class naval patrol vessel dry docked at the mouth of Auckland Creek, Gladstone. Learn more.
The City of Sydney has announced that $4.5 million in cash and in-kind support has been awarded to a range of creative organisations, community groups and more across the NSW capital. Celebrating Sydney’s culture and creativity are 137 projects, which include free community festivals and opportunities for creatives. Recipients include: $45,000 for the Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival hosted at multiple venues across the City of Sydney local area; $37,000 for a program in Haymarket involving diverse artists who will create installations and develop exhibitions, workshops and talks to engage the public 24 hours a day; $30,000 to help equip young Waterloo residents with documentary filmmaking skills, connecting them with award-winning filmmakers and activists to celebrate the area’s history and future; and $25,000 for a series of free, weekly dance workshops at Carriageworks celebrating cultural diversity and inclusion. Learn more.
Shortlists and finalists
The Australian Writers’ Guild (AWG) has announced the eight writers selected from hundreds of entries for the 2025 Emerging Writers’ Awards. The writers, working in the mediums of film, television pilots and more, are competing in both long- and short-form categories. In the former are Jess Fisher for Homebody (Television, Comedy), Senie Priti for Hussk (Short Film, Thriller) and Georgia Struckel for Sugar Soap (Television, Comedy). While the long-form finalists are Mads McRae for Graves’ End (Television, Drama), Danielle Frost for Hell’s Gate (Feature, Horror), January Jones for Hysterical (Feature, Thriller), Melody Chen for Penny Loafers (Television, Comedy) ands Charlie Milne for Tiny Places (Feature, Drama). The winning writers in both categories will be announced at an industry event in Melbourne in mid-July, with each prize winner taking home $5000 in script development funding, provided by Scripted Ink. For more about the shortlist.
Read: 2025 Miles Franklin shortlist
The AWG has also announced the nine scripts and their writers that have been shortlisted for the 2025 John Hinde Award for Excellence in Science-Fiction Writing. The shortlist – across produced and unproduced categories – includes seven feature films and two episodes of children’s television series Rock Island Mysteries. In the produced category, the shortlisted projects are Rock Island Mysteries: An Echo Must Return by Rachel Laverty (Children’s Television), Rock Island Mysteries: To Catch a Ghost by Matthew Bon (Children’s Television), War Machine by Patrick Hughes and James Beaufort (Feature Film) and Zero by Jesse Laurie (Feature Film). The unproduced shortlisted projects are: Blood Will Have Blood by Vivienne Walshe (Feature Film), Mine by Noah Jordan (Feature Film), The Harvest by Darcy Conlan (Feature Film), The World Michael Made by Peter Redhead (Feature Film) and Tiny Places by Charlie Milne (Feature Film). The winning writers will be announced at an industry event in Melbourne in mid-July. The winning writer in each category will take home $5000, provided by the John Hinde trust. Learn more.
Check out previous Opportunities and Awards wraps for more announcements.
