JOHNNY BLADES WINS NEW WRITERS FELLOWSHIP - the first Winston Churchill/ McNeish travel fellowship

 Johnny Blades, a 38 year old journalist with Radio New Zealand International, has been awarded the first Winston Churchill/ McNeish travel fellowship for 2014, it has been announced.

     Already an experienced traveller in Melanesia, Mr Blades plans research for a book in remote parts of Papua New Guinea, a region “little known or explored by New Zealand writers”, he says.

     Announcing Johnny Blades as the first recipient, the community and voluntary sector minister, Jo Goodhew, said the new writers’ fellowship had been made possible by “a very generous donation from Sir James and Lady Helen McNeish to encourage promising writers and journalists to travel and live in another culture”.

     The fellowship, in partnership with the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Board, is an exciting departure for the Trust, according to its chair, Rachel Selby.  “We are thrilled to sponsor this initial joint venture,” she says.  “We hope the innovation will stimulate interest in the Trust and the fellowships it already provides, and open the door to other joint ventures.”

     The McNeish fellowship is worth between $5000 and $7000,  and is designed for emerging New Zealand writers and journalists seeking primarily to immerse themselves in a third-world or under-developed society where Anglo-Saxon is not the predominant language.  The philosophy behind it stems from James McNeish’s own experiences as a young adult; and is designed “to reward those who recognise the need to get away from a small enclosed society like ours and have their horizons altered, so that, returning, they can begin to look at their homeland through fresh eyes”.

     “It’s a unique and imaginative award,” says Kate de Goldi. “It provides a timely spur to young writers and journalists hungry to make a real difference.” 

     “It seems to me essential,” Tony Simpson adds, “that New Zealand writers have this early experience of landing in a society and culture in which none of their suppositions are taken for granted.  It opens out the whole world.”

     Kate de Goldi and Tony Simpson are two of a small committee of writers who helped draft the criteria and set up the fellowship.

     Mr Blades says, “The fellowship will enable me to learn more about a region I am deeply interested in but which is still largely unexplored.  It’s a rare opportunity.”

     Successful fellows are expected to contribute to the cost of their travel.