Left: Aviva Endean, image by Sarah Walker. | Right: Bella Li, image by Robert Albazi.
The Creative Fellowships empower mid-career Australian artists with $200,000 grants over two years — giving them the resources and freedom to focus on their work, innovate their practice, and take creative risks.
The grant funds are untied, allowing the Fellows to dedicate themselves wholly to their craft without the pressure of specific outcomes. The Ian Potter Cultural Trust joined this program in 2024, committing to fund two additional fellowships each year until 2028.
Endean and Li join eight other Sidney Myer Creative Fellows in receiving life-changing grants over the next two years. In total, $2 million in grants will fuel the creative journeys of these ten exceptional individuals. Get to know them below.
Since 2011, the Sidney Myer Fund’s Creative Fellowships have provided $21 million in funding to over 120 artists, creatives and cultural leaders. Learn more about the program.
Aviva Endean. Image: IJ Biermann.
Aviva Endean is a sound artist, clarinettist and composer dedicated to connecting people with one another and their environment through attentive listening.
Her creative practice opens up possibilities for collaborations, transcending the traditional in favour of a dynamic artistry which embraces the unfamiliar. While deeply steeped in music, her vision extends beyond her primary artform to expand ways in which sound can be experienced and understood, and to discover new forms of expression that reflect the here and now.
Endean’s solo music has been released on Room40 (Australia), SOFA music (Norway) FRIM records (Sweden) and she has toured her work to major festivals internationally. She has worked in close collaboration with organisations including Chunky Move, Chamber Made and Liquid Architecture. She is also an ongoing member of award-winning cross-cultural ensembles Hand to Earth, The Cloud Maker and Lung Swara.
Bella Li. Image: Leah Jing McIntosh.
Bella Li is a writer, artist, designer, and editor. She has published three hybrid books of poetry and visual art: Argosy, Lost Lake, and Theory of Colours, with Vagabond Press.
Her work has won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry, the NSW Literary Award for Poetry, and an Australian Book Designers Association Award for book design; and has been shortlisted or commended in the Queensland Literary Award for Poetry, the Anne Elder Award, and the Wesley Michel Wright Prize.
Li has made work in collaboration with visual artists, sound artists, and musicians, and has been commissioned by institutions including the National Gallery of Victoria, Heide Museum of Modern Art, the Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.
She holds a PhD in creative writing from The University of Melbourne and was recently in residence at the BR Whiting Studio in Rome and a featured artist at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival.
Emily Bitto is a writer of fiction, poetry and non-fiction.
Gabrielle Brady is a writer and director making films and video art situated between fiction and documentary.
Joel Bray is a Wiradjuri man and Artistic Director of Joel Bray Dance.
Kimberley Moulton is a Yorta Yorta woman and an independent curator and writer.
Nathan Maynard is a Trawlwoolway man and multidisciplinary artist.
Nithya Nagarajan is a Tamil-Australian artist, curator and writer working across contemporary performance and visual cultures.
Ryan Presley is a Marri Ngarr artist with a practice spanning painting, drawing, printmaking, installation and new media.
Yve Blake is a writer and composer for stage and screen.
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