Gideon Arudali, Georgina Kaitiplel, Siobhan McDonnell, Marcel Melto, Lina Ariki, Tio Bang, Emily Crawford, Dely Roy Nalo and Amelia Lovo at the Vanuatu National Arts Festival, August 2019.
The Niu Yam Vanuatu Artists Fellowship Project 2019/2020 is supporting eight emerging and established ni-Vanuatu artists to create new creative work responding to issues of climate change and traditional ecological knowledge across a year long fellowship. Artists from across a range of art forms were invited to take part with the goal of making new creative works for an exhibition in 2020. Fellowship participants are Gideon Arudali, Tio Bang, Philemon James, Georgina Kaitiplel, Niki Kauatonga, Amelia Lovo, Marcel Melto, and Joan Niras.
In August 2019, at the start of the Fellowship, a small group of artists were supported by the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta to attend the Vanuatu National Arts Festival on the island of Malekula. They took part in festival activities, did their own research on kastom arts, met with practitioners from around Vanuatu and with Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta fieldworkers.
The Niu Yam Vanuatu Artists Fellowship Project is a collaborative project supported by Vanuatu organisations Fondation Suzanne Bastien, the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta, and Further Arts in collaboration with Australian National University researchers Professor Margaret Jolly and Dr Siobhan McDonnell from the Engendering Climate Change, Reframing Futures In Oceania project, and Dr Maya Haviland as part of the Remix/Rimix project. ni-Vanuatu Curators Marcel Melto and Lina Ariki are leading the project on the ground.