The Ockham Collective is a charitable trust with a kaupapa of supporting lifelong creativity and education. Our support is direct: we offer three beautiful spaces to like-minded folk who want to share their knowledge and ideas with our city. At the heart of this is our annual residency programme. This year they're a highly diverse bunch including a filmmaker,  two directors, three writers, a visual artist and four musicians.

With appropriate triumphal trumpet fanfare, these are they:

• Marina Alofagia McCartney – Marina is a New Zealand-born Samoan/Geordie/Romani award-winning filmmaker and scholar. Her films have featured in numerous festivals, including Palm Springs ShortFest, NZIFF Best Shorts (finalist), ImagineNATIVE and Hawai’i International Film Festival. Marina wrote and directed the Samoan piece for the portmanteau film Vai, which opened the NATIVe section at the 2019 Berlinale.
• Dan Musgrove – Dan is an Emmy Award-winning NZ screenwriter, playwright and actor. A graduate of Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School, he is best known to television audiences as the original Mr Asia, Marty Johnson, in NZ’s Underbelly series and as Lefty Munroe in six seasons of the TV3’s hit one-hour comedy drama Westside, for which he also wrote scripts. Other recent screenwriting credits include the Emmy-winning short-form thriller INSiDE for Prime.
• Paula Morris – Paula took out the fiction prize at the New Zealand Book Awards in 2012 with her wonderful novel Rangatira and the best first fiction prize in 2003 with Queen of Beauty. She currently convenes the Master in Creative Writing programme at the University of Auckland.
• Martin Roberts – French-New Zealand cellist Martin Roberts returned from studying at Germany's Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in 2020. A sought-after teacher and performer, he has played with the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Manukau Symphony Orchestra, Bach Musica, Pipers Sinfonia, Ensemble East, the newly formed Auckland Chamber Music Collective, and as part of his own string quartet, the Arcus Quartet, which he runs with his wife and 2021 Ockham Collective resident Joella Pinto.
• Paul Woodruffe – A visual artist and Senior Lecturer in Creative Industries at Unitec (Te Pukenga), Paul is represented by Föenander Galleries in Mt Eden, Auckland, and has work in private and public collections in NZ, Europe, Australia, and the USA. He has contributed to collaborative public artworks commissioned by the European Union (Culburb Project, Vienna), as well as Auckland Council, Artweek Auckland, Whau Local Board, Eden-Albert Local Board and Henderson Local Board (with Kākano Youth Arts Collective).
• Ben Fernandez – Ben is a classically trained jazz pianist, composer and arranger. He has a Masters Degree in Music majoring in jazz performance from the University of Auckland. He also has degrees in physics, computer science and business management. Ben has played at the Cannes Film Festival, New Years Celebrations at the World Trade Centre in Dubai, a party for President Bill Clinton in Mumbai, and at Sachin Tendulkar's wedding! 
• Jessie Leov – Originally from Whakatū, Nelson, Jessie Leov (MMus) is a composer, songwriter and musician currently based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Her work has been commissioned, performed or workshopped by groups across Aotearoa and beyond, including the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, NZTrio, Auckland Chamber Choir, Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, Auckland Youth Choir, Creative Waikato and Celebris Ensemble (USA).
• James Littlewood – James is a director, producer and writer with over 25 years' experience in theatre, film, opera and festivals. He is hell-bent on making the world a better place one story at a time, and likes to remind anyone who'll listen that "we're nothing without our stories". At the helm of Going West, the longest running indie lit fest in Aotearoa, he navigated the rolling lockdowns with new digital strategies in podcasting and film production, and – in the words of one stakeholder – created "a refreshing, invigorating development of what a literary festival can be".
• Marion Prebble – Marion is a Tāmaki Makarau–based actor, writer and producer, with a curiosity for process and play. Highlights of her career so far include performing in award-winning short films Datsun and Baby?, being the Producer-in-Residence at The Basement Theatre and the producer of Massive Company, and writing, producing and performing in The Panty Shelf in Edinburgh, London, and Auckland.
• Tim Heath –  Tim writes poetry and, occasionally, gets it published. He was MC at Auckland’s Poetry Live for several years and he won poetry slams in New Zealand and Australia, including Poetry Idol, WOMAD, Going West, Burnie Gold Cup (Tasmania) and Bellingen (rural NSW). Tim published a poetry collection, Not as The Crow Flies, in 2018 and a memoir, The Accidental Teacher, in 2021.
• Louise Evans – Louise was born and raised in Hokianga but now calls Tāmaki Makaurau home. She's been playing fiddle since the age of seven. She's been a trustee and programming committee member for Gaidhealtachd NZ, New Zealand's pan-Celtic summer school, since 2016. She's currently the fiddler for Hot Diggity, an all-woman bluegrass band, and plays regularly in sessions in Auckland.

2024 Residencies

We want you! If you would like to be considered for the 2024 Ockham Collective or need more information about how it all works, contact OC director Peter Dragicevich by 31 October. There's no form to fill in or anything like that. Simply let us know a little about yourself and what kind of projects you'd like to bring to our spaces.