What we did
For six weeks in March and April, Creative New Zealand joined artists and arts organisations at 18 in-person workshops in 14 locations and six online workshops, and asked for feedback through online submissions and direct emails. We asked people to tell us what the future of arts development in Aotearoa New Zealand could look like; people across the country told us about their frustrations with the current system and their hopes for the future.
What we heard
The way we fund arts development in Aotearoa New Zealand right now isn’t working for everyone. We need to do things differently. Artists, arts organisations and communities across the country need to be at the heart of these changes.
The detailed report
These themes, and more of what we heard, are described in the full feedback report here:
Themes that emerged
An appeal to Creative New Zealand to build relationships with artists and arts organisations based on trust, respect and longevity so Creative New Zealand can better understand their needs when making decisions that affect them.
A desperate request to Creative New Zealand to just make it easier for artists and arts organisations to work with Creative New Zealand in both process and interactions.
A provocation to Creative New Zealand to give communities a stronger decision-making role about the arts development activities in, by, for and with their community so that specific and nuanced arts development needs are met more effectively.
A request to Creative New Zealand to use our status as a crown entity, our resources and our networks to broker relationships between artists, arts organisations, territorial authorities, local governments and businesses to build better communities.
A challenge to Creative New Zealand to use our existing government relationships more effectively so the lives of artists and the value of the arts are better respected and understood.
What’s next
We want to make these changes too, and we want to work with artists to make them. Some of these things will take longer to see change but we can start them now.
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From May 2023 we’ll work with small groups of big picture thinkers from the arts to come up with a simpler and more accessible arts development programme from 2024.
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One of the long-term goals is for people to make decisions about arts in their communities. This will take more time, but we’ll start on this in May too and let you know how this is going towards the end of 2023.
Our commitment
We know it’s critical we make changes beyond our arts development programmesand how we run our processes. Making connections and being clearer about the value of the arts means we need to figure out how we can be more effective. To do that, we’ll need to get a lot more people, organisations and other decision makers on board to make real change here. That will take some time, but we will come back to you with our plan by the end of 2023.
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