Elevate Mentorships 2025

“This mentorship will expand my practice exponentially by providing access to an artist/industry professional working with similar art forms and materials who is further along in their career and can transfer skills and knowledge in a hands-on and practical way.”
Antoni Phillips, 2024 Recipient

Mentorships are a powerful means for anyone to develop new skills, connections, and pathways in your chosen profession. Recognising this, we designed the Elevate Mentorship Program. This program is a valuable way to build your emerging career by providing knowledge, exploration, and hands on experience, beyond your studies, with up to $3,000 available for your mentorship.

Elevate Mentorships are an artist-led form of learning, where you can define your own professional development goals and work with more established practitioners to achieve them.

For some, this can mean pursuing support and guidance to develop skills related to your craft, be that artistic, musical, production, film or more. For others, this can be an opportunity to focus on the development of business skills related to being a sole trader, such as networking, marketing, or strategic planning.

Here are a few examples of how your mentorship could be structured:

Studio visits, allowing for the hands-on development of skills and observational learning
Development sessions for a dance, music or theatre work
Film script development and advice on editing a film
Advice on mounting an exhibition
Assistance with establishing a business and/or marketing strategy for an arts practice

Your mentorship can be done face to face, or you could explore an online mentorship and connect with a mentor without the barrier of geography. You have the freedom to choose whatever mentor you deem most beneficial to your artistic development. The only limitation is your imagination.

Up to $3,000 is available for your Elevate Mentorship. We suggest you think about how you will structure your budget to pay your mentor’s fees and cover your expenses associated with undertaking the mentorship. If you’re unsure, please get in touch with us to talk this through – we’re happy to help!

Stephanie Doddridge, is a graduate from the University of South Australia and emerging multidisciplinary artist who undertook a mentorship with South Australian visual artist Bridget Currie in 2023.

“The mentorship supported me in navigating the production and curation of my first solo exhibition, along with planning my second solo exhibition and finding future opportunities. It has been incredibly valuable to me and my practice. With Bridget’s input, I successfully put on my first solo exhibition and ended up winning the SALA City Rural Emerging Artist Award for one of my pieces in the exhibition…”
Stephanie Doddridge

Kate Hwang, a graduate from the University of Adelaide and emerging cellist, undertook one-on-one lessons in 2023 with Hyung Suk Bae, the Associate Principal Cellist at the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.

“This mentorship program has also pushed me to learn and adapt quickly, which has improved my playing immensely. I have also been able to deal better with my performance anxiety as I gain more experience.”
Kate Hwang

Thanks to our passionate giving circle of key philanthropic patrons, our long running Elevate Mentorship Program has supported over 200 emerging artists over the past thirty years.

KEY DATES
Applications open Monday 19 May 2025
Applications closed Sunday 29 June 2025 at 11:59pm
For activity between 1 September 2025 and 30 June 2026

WHO CAN APPLY?
We are thrilled to support final year students and graduates for up to five years, from your official conferral date. Graduates and final year students can apply for our funded opportunities, provided activity takes place after your studies have been completed. Please check your eligibility here.

RESOURCES
For emerging artists interested in being mentored we suggest you read this guide Australia Council for the Arts Guide to Mentoring and review the Code of Practice for Visual Arts, Craft and Design from NAVA, which covers good practice approaches to working relationships, ethical standards of access and inclusion, and payment rates for artists and arts workers.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
We recommend that you read our Elevate Mentorship Top Tips and Grant Writing Tip Sheet for suggestions on how to write your application. We also strongly encourage you to discuss your submission with Helpmann Academy before you press send!

Interested applicants are encouraged to get in touch to discuss how we can help with your application. To book a 30-minute consult, please use our online booking form or call us on (08) 7089 0720.

The Elevate Mentorship Program is proudly supported through a giving circle of philanthropic patrons and the Government of South Australia through CreateSA.