Details of new scholarships and grants to be announced this year.

Details of new scholarships and grants to be announced this year.

The CLNZ Cultural Fund was established in 2001 to provide funding for cultural and social purposes in the interests of those that we represent. This year, we say goodbye to the CLNZ Writers' Awards and over the course of the year, we will announce details of the new and exciting opportunities available to the wider writing and publishing community.

Supporting NZ authors and publishers is nothing new to CLNZ. In 2001 the Cultural Fund was established to provide funding for cultural and social purposes in the interests of the publishers and authors that CLNZ represents.

The Cultural Fund’s purpose is to invest in projects that:

- Encourage the development of writers, publishers and educators

- Help to grow the sector.

Responses to CLNZ’s 2013 stakeholder survey identified that a significant number of writers and publishers from all corners of the sector are feeling under-supported. There was also a strong feeling that the current awards offered by CLNZ are not accessible to most. For those that did fit the criteria, they found the application process to be time consuming and costly.

The survey results raised an important question –

Do the current awards and grants offered by CLNZ meet the purpose as defined above?

To investigate this further, in 2013 CLNZ set up a Cultural Fund Review Working Group. The group reported back to the CLNZ Board who, after much discussion, concluded that the significant cost involved in running the CLNZ Writers’ Awards would be better spent funding activities that were accessible to a larger section of NZ’s budding writing and publishing community via scholarships, research and training grants and a contestable fund.

The CLNZ Writers’ Awards first began in 2002 and has contributed well over $1 million to NZ Non-Fiction. Paula Browning CLNZ CEO commented, “We are sad to say goodbye to the Writers’ Awards but look forward to developing exciting new opportunities over the course of the year to support the wider writing and publishing community.”

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