The Randell Cottage Trust is urgently seeking crowdfunding to continue its sought-after writers’ residency, now in its 24th year, through a Boosted campaign.
Since 2001, the Randell Cottage Writers Fellowship has offered six months of rent-free accommodation each year to mid-career New Zealand writers. They stay in a restored heritage cottage in Thorndon, Wellington, with a stipend to cover their living costs.
Citing limited funding availability, Creative New Zealand has pulled its grant for the fellowship stipend as of 2025. This decision applies for the next three-year funding cycle.
Randell Cottage Trust Chair Christine Hurley says the Randell Cottage Writers Trust is determined to find ways of continuing to fund the Fellowship so that this year’s recipient, celebrated Sri Lankan/Pakeha writer Saraid de Silva, can take up her residency from July.
Saraid was chosen for 2025 from a highly competitive group of applicants, based on her track record and the potential of the writing project she submitted. The selection committee’s judgment has been borne out by the recent inclusion of Saraid’s novel Amma in the longlist for the Jann Medlicott Acorn award for literature in the 2025 Ockham Awards and sensationally in the UK Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Founding Trustee, Dame Fiona Kidman, has commented on the loss of funding for the Randell Cottage fellowship in the wider context of literature’s struggle to maintain adequate support in the New Zealand arts and culture sector. What was crucial in her own career, she says, was the support she received to build on her earlier works, including a Katherine Mansfield Fellowship in France. “It is a true gift for an emerging writer to have a quiet space free of day-to-day pressures in which to develop their craft.”
Poet Hinemoana Baker, the most recent Randell Cottage resident, has lent her support to the Boosted campaign, endorsing its unique position in the literary landscape.
“I was troubled to hear that the Trust will need to find other funding for the coming three years, but also deeply confident there are many people and organisations who will be really excited at the prospect of supporting this singular, extraordinary project,” she says.
“There are other residencies in the country, and indeed in the world, but so few have the combination of unique offerings that Randell Cottage does.”
Christine Hurley says that any financial support, big or small, is greatly appreciated.
“With your help, we can enable Saraid to fulfil her creative potential, while we work to preserve the Randell Cottage residency and its contribution to the NZ arts and cultural landscape.”
ENDS
Find the Boosted campaign: www.thearts.co.nz/boosted/
More information about Randell Cottage: www.randellcottage.co.nz
Built in 1868, historic Randell Cottage has been a writers’ residency for New Zealand and French writers since 2001, when it was gifted to a Trust by the first owners’ descendants.
The Randell Cottage Writers Trust is supported by the Arts Foundation and Wellington City Council. It works in close partnership with the Embassy of France. Two writers’ residencies are offered annually at the Randell Cottage: one is available to New Zealand writers and the other to French nationals (financially supported by the Embassy of France).
Founding trustees include Dame Fiona Kidman and Vincent O’Sullivan, and visiting writers have included award-winning novelist, poets and academics including Whiti Hereaka, Kirsty Gunn, Peter Wells, Witi Ihimaera, and Renée, among many others, all recorded on the Randell Cottage website www.randellcottage.co.nz/