How Winning The Grant McLennan Fellowship Changed Thomas Calder's Worldview

Since 2007 Queensland songwriters have been eligible for the Grant McLennan Fellowship, the prestigious $25,000 award which allows the lucky winner to relocate to New York, London or Berlin for up to six months to further their artistic pursuits. Named in remembrance of Grant McLennan - the much-missed co-founder of The Go-Betweens who sadly passed away in 2006 - the Fellowship is an incredible opportunity for local artists, as Thomas Calder from The Trouble With Templeton found after being victorious in 2014 and decamping to London for a life-changing sojourn. 

"It was incredible, I achieved everything that I would have hoped that I would get from an experience like that..."

"It was incredible, I achieved everything that I would have hoped that I would get from an experience like that and more," Calder marvels. "When I went over there I knew it would be amazing, of course, but I didn't know exactly how it was going to be amazing; whether it would be an industry focus or a personal growth. For me it ended up being a really big personal journey, and as clichéd and terrible as it sounds I think I came back a different person than what I went over as, which was great."

Having entered the award primarily as a big fan of The Go-Betweens, upon winning Calder chose London mainly because his UK label was based there, but it seems that the main benefits were gleaned by the introspection that the Fellowship afforded. "I was over there for three-and-a-half months and having such a long time over there enabled me to spend the first part of it really being solitary, which I found was really, really good for me," he admits. "Having the opportunity to get away from where you live and the people you're surrounded by - just the life that you live normally - is a really good way of clarifying things and getting some perspective on who you are and the life that you live at the moment. For me that was a really nice way to start the trip, just being really self-reflective and solitary and taking some time to think about myself and my art and what I want to do with my art was a really beautiful thing. It was never a plan but it ended up that way, and I think it was a perfect way to explore things and really get excited about music and art and life."

And naturally these personal insights seeped into Calder's creative endeavours. "I never really stop writing, but the type of things I was writing over there were great as well," he enthuses. "If you apply those lessons to a genre then you're not being held back by what you think your music should be or how you define what your music is. It can be really freeing and allow you to explore all different types of sounds, knowing at the end of the day that it's all coming from you so you can't really do anything wrong in terms of how your music sounds, or what genre it is, or what you're writing about."