Are you interested in applying for a Churchill Fellowship? Hear from three Sydney arts workers, all recent Churchill Fellows, about their experiences and research projects; their highlights and successes, as well as unexpected insights.  Patricia Adjei investigated the protection of Indigenous cultural rights in Panama and the United States;   Morwenna Collett explored inclusive music programs, venues and festivals that actively engage people with disability across Ireland, the UK and USA; and Jo Higgins researched different models of informal learning and youth-led engagement in arts organisations across the USA and Canada.

Churchill Fellowships are awarded across a range of fields – arts, architecture, agriculture, health, business, sport, science. They allow for 4-8 weeks of international travel, designed around an individual research project to explore international best practice and innovation that can be applied in Australia. More than 100 Churchill Fellowships are awarded around Australia every year. 

Patricia Adjei, Head of First Nations Arts & Culture, Australia Council.

Patricia is a Wuthathi, Mabuiag Islander and Ghanaian woman from Sydney, Australia. Patricia has Bachelors of Arts and Law from UNSW. She currently works at the Australia Council for the Arts as the First Nations arts and culture director. She previously worked at the Copyright Agency l Viscopy as the Indigenous engagement manager. She is a 2018 Churchill fellowship recipient, investigating the practical application of laws in the USA and Panama that protect Indigenous cultural rights.She served on the City of Sydney, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advisory panel and has been a Board member of the Contemporary Pacific Arts Festival and the Moogahlin Performing Arts Board.In 2010, Patricia worked at the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva as the 2010 Indigenous Intellectual Property Law Fellow. This position provided valuable insight into the traditional knowledge division’s work that is being done as the Secretariat for the international normative process on the draft international instruments on Traditional knowledge. Patricia has also worked as a lawyer at the Arts Law Centre of Australia and National Indigenous TV. She is also a published author, and has also written several articles and a chapter on Indigenous cultural intellectual property rights. 

Jo Higgins, Young Creatives Coordinator, MCA Australia. 

Jo Higgins is an educator, writer and public programmer with a focus on informal, peer-led learning programs for young people, arts partnerships and research. She is currently the Young Creatives Coordinator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.Jo has previously worked for Kaldor Public Art Projects, piloting their regional youth engagement program for Project 30: Marina Abramovic – In Residence in 2015 as well as organisations including the Biennale of Sydney, UNSW Art & Design, Australian Design Centre and the University of Sydney. She also worked at the South London Gallery on the three-year Louis Vuitton Young Arts Project in partnership with Tate, Whitechapel Gallery, the Hayward Gallery and the Royal Academy of Art from 2011-2013. Jo is the author of 21st Century Portraits (NPG London, 2013) and a contributing author in Beyond Community Engagement: transforming dialogues in art, education and the cultural sphere (ed. K. Snepvangers & D. Matthewson-Mitchell, UNSW/Common Ground Publishing, 2018). She was a contributing writer for the 2016 Biennale of Sydney; has written exhibition essays galleries including Alaska Projects and The Lock Up, Newcastle and is a regular contributor to Art Collector magazine. She holds a Bachelor of Arts (History)/Bachelor of Art Theory (Honours) degree from UNSW Art & Design and an MA Contemporary Art from Manchester University. In 2018 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to investigate different models of informal learning and youth-led engagement in arts organisations in the USA and Canada.