Creating Cross-Cultural Connections: ARTP Scholars Secure Australia-Korea Foundation Grant for Innovative Children’s Book Project
We’re absolutely thrilled to receive the 2025-2026 Australia-Korea Foundation grant, which was announced recently! This feels like such a significant moment – not just for the project itself, but for what it represents about cross-cultural storytelling and children’s voices. We’re partnering with Kids’ Own Publishing for this project, whose expertise in collaborative bookmaking with children will be invaluable as we bring these cross-cultural stories to life. See the wonderful work they have been doing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_etlZLvKrs
The project invites Australian children from diverse backgrounds to create their own stories about Korean language and culture through their eyes. We’re excited by what will emerge when we give young people this space to explore connections between Australian and Korean cultural elements. These will be multilingual, arts-rich stories that we suspect will surprise us all with their creativity and insight. There’s something powerful about children’s ability to see beyond the boundaries we often create. The project will culminate with an anthology that celebrates children’s unique perspectives on cross-cultural connections, which will be presented at children’s book festivals across South Korea.
This project sits at the intersection of so many things we care about as ARTP scholars – multilingual pedagogies, children’s creativity, cultural representation, and the ways we build understanding across difference. Through our various bookmaking work we’ve come to see how powerful it is when we centre children’s voices in these conversations about identity and belonging.
Watch this space and check out the other grant recipients – looks like it’s going to be an exciting 2025-2026 for building AUS-KOR relations: https://www.dfat.gov.au/people-people/foundations-councils-institutes/australia-korea-foundation/grant-recipients/australia-korea-foundation-2025-26-grant-recipients