Last year, One Tree House received a Contestable Fund Grant towards their bilingual and te reo Māori publishing programme. Publisher Christine Dale discusses why they applied and how the grant has helped.
"Not only has the grant freed us to follow through on the plans we already had in place, but it allowed us to support a new Niuean writers group and translators in a range of other Pacific region languages.”– Christine Dale, OneTree House
Last year, One Tree House received a Contestable Fund Grant towards their bilingual and te reo Māori publishing programme. Publisher Christine Dale discusses why they applied and how the grant has helped.
Why did you decide to apply?
We first discussed applying for a CLNZ Contestable Fund Grant, at a point when we had a long wish-list of titles to create. Many of the books we make help young learners to see their world and their first language, in print. When we began OneTree House, we made a commitment to support all cultures in Aotearoa New Zealand – and to support teaching and a love of literature.
One of our aims is to increase access to published works in vulnerable languages and to embed the relevance of books in the world of young learners. We also aim to support and encourage new writers and translators to tell stories that reflect the experiences of their communities, in community languages. Crissi Blair (National Library Services to Schools) summed up the importance of this recently, she said, ‘being able to see your own world, or one familiar to you, is vital for readers.’
We knew the market needed works in a wide range of Pacific, Asian and Arabic languages and especially in te reo Māori. We also knew that we had access to the skills required to produce these because, in the four proceeding years, we had already released a core bilingual list. The difficulty was that costs for the full list were high and returns would be slow to come in. What we didn’t have was the budget to pay all concerned a fair return for their skills.
The CLNZ Contestable Fund was exactly what we were looking for. It’s aimed at publishing sector growth. That includes growing the number of Aotearoa New Zealand works (books); developing industry skills; and supporting the creation of new works with an eye to their commercial success.
How did the grant help?
This year, we have already planned, produced, and published four new bilingual titles with help from the grant and have a further four about to go to print. We also have plans for an additional four titles in our 2023 schedule which, while not part of our submission, have become possible due to the grant’s support of our 2022 list.
Not only has the grant freed us to follow through on the plans we already had in place, but it allowed us to support a new Niuean writers group and translators in a range of other Pacific region languages.
Feedback from bookstores that are strongly linked to schools and the Pacific community on the My Gagana Series 3 titles (which were the first titles released that relate to the grant) has been very positive. In fact, all of the bilingual titles in our submission have been very well received!
The Contestable Fund is open for 2022. This year $75,000 is available for strategic projects that demonstrate publishing sector growth. Read more here >>