Jo Higgins

NATIONAL YOUNG WRITERS PROGRAM

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

2022 - 2024

In 2021 I was invited to propose a new youth engagement program to the National Gallery of Australia. The project - and the initial invitation - was broadly informed by a series of conversations and questions we were collectively asking:

• What does it means to engage young people both nationally & digitally?

• What pathways and equitable opportunities do young aspiring creatives need today?

• What is the role of museums and galleries in supporting young people and providing these sorts of opportunities?

• What do spaces for critical reflection and engagement look like and need in order to be productive and safe and generative?

• How can we better tell the stories of our museums and galleries?

• How can we build and nurture relationships between different communities and our institutions?

From these initial conversations, a pilot Digital Young Writers Mentorship Program was devised and delivered between February and November 2022.

Digital Young Writers Mentorship, 2022

The mentorship invited five established, highly respected arts writers, curators, critics & arts workers to mentor five early career young arts writers over the course of seven months. The mentors were Andy Butler, Tristen Harwood, Jane O’Sullivan, Nur Shkembi and Tian Zhang.

Mentees, who applied via application, worked towards a series of paid published outcomes including texts in response to the National Gallery’s exhibition program and collection, and a series of reviews and interviews for the program’s publishing partner, ArtsHub.

You can read pieces by mentees Jade Irvine, Hen Vaughan, Aisyah Aaqil Sumito, Ianni Huang and Michelle Guo at the link below.

There were also regular masterclasses and conversations with Gallery staff, sector experts and artists on subjects including writing outside your community, criticism, creative non-fiction and building community

Guest speakers over the course of the program included National Gallery Director Nick Mitzevich; Deputy Director First Nations Bruce Johnson-McLean; ArtsHub Visual Arts Editor Gina Fairley; The Saturday Paper Arts Editor Alison Croggon; Liminal magazine editor Leah Jing McIntosh; cultural critic Cher Tan; writer and artist Diego Ramirez; curators Emily McDaniel and Coby Edgar; and artist Hayley Millar Baker. 

The mentorship culminated in a visit to the National Gallery of Australia for its 40th birthday celebrations and a panel talk, “So you want to write about art?” reflecting on the experience of the project and the state of opportunities for young writers today. 

Digital Young Writers Residency, 2024

Following 12 months of reflection and work with the Gallery, in 2024 the National Young Writers Program iterated to become an digital residency for 16 young people aged 19 - 25 from across Australia.

The Residency took forward several key tenets from the pilot program:

• A focus on developing creative and critical writing skills

• Providing an understanding of the Australian arts ecology and the role of the National Gallery

• The need to build and support a network and community of early career creatives

• Paid, published writing opportunities for participants

The Residency was structured around four masterclasses that paired a curator or guest artist from the National Gallery with an external writer, editor or critic to unpack a particular writing skill and artistic or cultural practice. These included Writing about Objects, Writing with Artists, Writing on First Nations Art and Writing Criticism & Considering Positionality.

There was also a dedicated Slack channel, weekly informal Zoom drop-ins and two in-person meet-ups, in Sydney and Melbourne.

Each three-hour masterclass included presentations, in-conversations, Q&As, writing activities and an extended writing brief. Participants had the opportunity to submit work for critical feedback from guest writers including Amelia Winata from MeMo Review, Tiarney Miekus (then-editor Art Guide Australia, critic Tom Melick & artist and poet Dr Charmaine Papertalk Green.

Writing outcomes included a series of creative responses to the work of Lindy Lee and her large-scale commission Ouroboros (2024) for the National Gallery, which have been published on the Gallery website (see below) and an invitation from Senior Curator of First Nations Art Tina Baum to write extended wall labels for works in the exhibition, EVER PRESENT: First Peoples Art of Australia (14 September 2024 - 24 August 2025).

ARTLINK PARTNERSHIP

For the 2024 Digital Residency we partnered with Artlink magazine, Editor Una Rey and Assistant Editor Belinda Howden.

Artlink has been publishing thematic issues dedicating to contemporary art practice across Australia and the Asia-Pacific for over four decades. It’s a rigorous, provocative, thoughtful publication that has long championed emerging and early career writers.

In 2024, Artlink offered two significant, paid professional development opportunities for program alumni:

• Mentorship for three alumni (2022 & 2024 cohorts) to guest-edit the Summer issue, including thematic development, commissioning, editing and promoting of the issue

• A commitment to commission paid texts for publication from two 2024 alumni

In July 2024, Ava Lacoon (2024), Claire Osborn-Li (2024) and Hen Vaughan (2022) were selected as the Guest Editors and their issue, Hyphen, was published on 1 December 2024.

The issue features writings by Darla Tejada, Madeleine Sherburn and Mackenzie Lee, and an essay by me.

You can buy a digital or hardcopy of the issue here.

PUBLISHED OUTCOMES: Stories & Ideas

You can read all the texts by both the 2022 and 2024 participants on the National Gallery of Australia website here.