Otago Fellows, Division of Humanities

Welcome to the University of Otago's Arts Fellowships pages

Our long-standing and prestigious Arts Fellowships offer five talented artists the freedom, space and time to explore their creativity without financial constraints.

Otago Fellowships are considered the premier fellowships in New Zealand and are highly sought after by artists, composers, dancers and writers.

About the Otago Fellowships

In his editorial notes for the quarterly Landfall in March 1959, Charles Brasch argued that 'part of a university's proper business is to act as nurse to the arts, or, more exactly, to the imagination as it expresses itself in the arts and sciences. Imagination may flourish anywhere. But it should flourish as a matter of course in the university, for it is only through imaginative thinking that society grows, materially and intellectually.'

At the University of Otago we believe that our writers, artists, composers, musicians and dancers have a vital role to play in the health and well-being of our community - not just the University community or the Dunedin community, but the wider community of New Zealand. We look to them to offer us visions we cannot make ourselves; we rely on their craft to generate the experiences which will challenge us, entertain us, provoke and reassure us, and tell us who we are.