What is the research? 

This research aims to elaborate, test, evaluate and communicate a new model for best practice in intercultural and transnational exchange for creative writers, a model based on principles and processes of ethical encounter and exchange through writing, listening and dialogue.  

Building on and further developing the WrICE program of Asia-Pacific collaborative residencies, the project involves the staging of an experimental series of collaborative residencies and ‘CoLabs,’ each with a different design and premise. Each event in the series is evaluated and reflected upon using mixed methods to test the assumptions of the model, discover potential benefits for writers and their writing, and identify knots and further questions. 

The key research activities of the project include: 

  • Reflections on the WrICE Collaborative Residencies of 2014-2018 

  • WrICE Digital Residencies 2020-2022, with Sing Lit Station, Singapore 

  • CoLab Singapore with Singapore Writers Festival, 2022 

  • Circular Connections Residency led by Ali Cobby Eckermann and Dicky Senda, 2023 

The objectives of the project are to: 

  • Develop a novel theoretical model and allied set of protocols and practices for literary intercultural exchange, with a view to improving transnational understanding and cultural literacies. 

  • Experiment with, activate, analyse and evaluate the model in action in the Asia-Pacific, focusing on its processes and consequences, via case studies of collaborative residency programs and collective writing laboratories. 

  • Examine how questions of ethics and power can be identified and addressed in protocols and practices of cultural exchange involving diverse peoples with different perspectives, histories and resources. 

  • Generate new knowledge in creative writing on the relationship between ongoing collaboration and intercultural knowledge exchange and the development of literary artforms, to underpin a strategic approach to developing relationships, not only peer-to-peer between writers, but also sustained network relations between the literary organisations and the national literary ecologies in which those writers are situated. 

The project will culminate in a Symposium sharing findings and to be held in Melbourne in mid 2024. Various publications will share the project findings. 

Hoi An, Vietnam, WrICE Vietnam residency 2015, image: Francesca Rendle-Short