McCraith House Pathways Residency

17 June, 2015

AWG and RMIT are offering Pathways writers in Victoria a two-week residency

Victorian screenwriters are invited to apply for a residency at RMIT's McCraith House on the Mornington Peninsula in a partnership with the Australian Writers’ Guild. Applicants for the two-week residency must be members of the AWG Pathways Program.

Thanks to RMIT’s Advanced Diploma of Screenwriting, the prize will also include two face-to-face meetings with acclaimed script assessor and mentor Karin Altmann from Scriptworks.

A panel of judges will assess the applicants' projects based on an expression of interest, the submission of a project outline, a synopsis and the first dozen or so pages of their script. To be eligible applicants need to own all the rights to the project.

Following the residency, the writer will be asked to present their writing and their work to students and staff at the School of RMIT's Media and Communication. This might take the form of a seminar, reading with discussion, a more formal lecture, lecture-as-dialogue, or participation in a ‘writers in conversation’ session.

McCraith House – a 1950’s icon dubbed “the Butterfly House” - was recently donated by the owners' descendants to RMIT University for writers’ residencies.

David Carlin, nonfictionLab co-Director says access to the Butterfly House has enabled RMIT to establish an impressive calendar of residencies and fellowships for Australian and international writers as well as Visiting Fellows.

"Already, we have hosted leading writers including Hannie Rayson, Carrie Tiffany, Wayne Macauley and Dai Fan (from China's Sun Yat Sen University). McCraith House also enables us to deepen industry and international partnerships with organisations such as the Stella Prize and the NonfictioNOW Conference”, David says.

“McCraith House is a truly special place — an iconic Australian beach house perched on a hillside on the Mornington Peninsula — and it provides the perfect sanctuary for the solitary work of writers, and the perfect counterpart to RMIT's vibrant city campus", he added. 

AWG Executive Director Jacqueline Elaine says the residency demonstrates the invaluable support bodies such as RMIT can provide to developing performance writers.

“We are especially happy to see the relationship is a two-way one, with RMIT supporting Victorian writers and the writers themselves able to feed back some of their expertise to RMIT’s Advanced Diploma of Screenwriting,” Ms Elaine says.

Download the application form and eligibility criteria here.

For more information please contact annabel@awg.com.au