Workshop | 24 June | Failure as a Pathway to Success

The workshop will provide practical hands-on activities to:

• critically analyse failed grant applications to identify which areas to improve, and
• think creatively about transforming or reappropriating these projects into something else entirely.

This is a flipped format with pre-workshop activities for participants to access online.

The hands on activities will use real grant applications to provide participants with realistic practical experiences of working through an application.

If you would like to use one of your own rejected grant applications as a workshop activity, please email it to Bella by the end of April. These will of course be anonymised.

Spaces for this workshop are limited, so please register now if you would like to secure a place.

Monica Curro
Violinist Monica Curro is currently in her 17th year as Assistant Principal 2nd Violin of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, and was a core member of the Australian Chamber Orchestra for 5 years before that. Monica has taught violin at The University of Melbourne and the Victorian College of the Arts and has coached at the Australian National Academy of Music and its Young Academy. She regularly tutors for Australian Youth Orchestra and National Music Camp programs. Monica recently gave the world premiere, as co-soloist with her sister Sarah, of Stefan Cassomenos’ Double Violin Concerto for acoustic, semi-acoustic and electric violins. In October 2013, she appeared as a soloist with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Sally Kift
Sally Kift is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) at James Cook University and President of the Australian Learning and Teaching Fellows (ALTF). Prior to commencing at JCU in 2012, Sally was a Professor of Law at Queensland University oTechnology, where she also served as Law Faculty Assistant Dean, Teaching & Learning (2001-2006) and QUT’s foundational Director, First Year Experience (2006-2007). Sally is a national Teaching Award winner (2003) and national Program Award winner (2007). She was awarded a Senior Fellowship by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) in 2006 to investigate the first year experience and is currently a Discipline Scholar in Law.

Failure as Feedforward for Success (or have a Plan B)
As any Google search of “success from failure” will tell you, many people fail their way to success. This is an undoubtedly true and motivating sentiment, but how does it translate to our current fraught and highly competitive grant environment where, if at first you don’t succeed, you are in very good company: only about 20% of OLT grant applications are ultimately successful. This presentation will not (and cannot) provide any silver bullet for grant success, but will suggest some strategies that may assist colleagues to at least ensure that the enormous effort put into grant applications and re-submissions might pay personal and institutional dividends; perhaps leading to a different, but equally valid, kind of success.