04 Oct 2016
The Arts Council has agreed Creative New Zealand’s strategic focus for the next five years will be on creating stronger arts communities, artists and organisations and greater public engagement with the arts in New Zealand.
Creative New Zealand’s strategic direction was agreed at the Arts Council’s July meeting and is set out in its Statement of Intent 2016-2021.
The Arts Council has also agreed three externally focused and two internally focused goals for Creative New Zealand to achieve. These are to:
- develop and regularly refine an investment strategy which will guide future investment and provide clarity to the sector
- support the arts sector to succeed by offering opportunities to build skills in setting vision, strategy and leadership, as well as having strong structures, skills and systems in place
- be a powerful advocate for the arts by ‘making the case’ for the arts and supporting others in their work to do the same
- improve its own service delivery and look afresh at how best to deliver activities to the sector
- be a more focused, higher-performing, learning organisation.
Creative New Zealand’s Statement of Intent is supported by the Statement of Performance Expectations (SPE) 2016/17 which sets out what the organisation aims to achieve this financial year. An SPE is published by Creative New Zealand annually.
The SPE includes annual priorities, activities and deliverables to support each of the five goals in the Statement of Intent as well as targets to be achieved. These will be reported against in Creative New Zealand’s annual report for 2016/17.
The Statement of Intent 2016-2021 was developed following a public online survey and 11 focus groups with stakeholders and members of the arts sector in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland. Key findings from this consultation are included in a Summary of Feedback.
The Arts Council also confirmed Creative New Zealand’s budget for 2016/17. It is expecting to invest $40.7 million in arts funding, capability building, international presentation and advocacy compared to $43.7 million in 2015/16. The latter included a $3 million one-off payment towards the new ASB Auckland Waterfront Theatre which opened on 22 September 2016.