19 Jun 2024

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NEWS

Creative Fellowship and Creative Impact Programmes

The results for the new Creative Fellowship and Creative Impact funds have been shared with applicants today.

The funds are part of the eight For the Arts programmes that are being rolled out in 2024. Designed in consultation with the sector these two funds were created to offer individual practitioners and collaborators greater flexibility in the way they use funding to make work.

The Creative Fellowship Fund supports artists, practitioners and collaboratives for a period in which to think, explore, create, and develop fresh ideas and approaches in their work.

A total of 55 applicants were successful and will receive support for 6-12 months. 

All assessment panel members reviewed all applications and made careful decisions about the allocation of resources. The budget was allocated proportionally to the money requested across each artform.  More than 600 applications were received for the Creative Fellowship Fund.

The Creative Impact Fund supports activity that encourages knowledge sharing, enriches audiences and deepens understanding and participation in the arts for up to 18 months. 

A total of 39 applicants were successful. 

More than 300 applications were received. All assessment panel members reviewed each application. The panels sought to strike a balance between funding levels and length of activity to ensure more applications could be supported.

Across the two funds a total of 37 million dollars was requested, against a total available budget of $3.6 million – $1.8 million for each fund.

The regional spread for the Creative Impact Fund was high, with 65% of the fund being distributed across the country, and 35% split between Auckland and Wellington. 

Changes to the assessment process mean that there are now no restrictions on how many applications are accepted to the round. Whilst this has enabled a greater number of applications to be assessed, it does mean that we have had to reconsider how we provide feedback, as it is no longer sustainable to provide individual feedback to every applicant. A general outline of trends and observations made by the assessment panel will be shared on Creative New Zealand’s website. 

Ahead of the funds opening, Creative New Zealand received record levels of interest from applicants seeking advice and support about applying. Funding advisors were available over the phone, via email and video to talk through applications. The feedback so far has been that this is of real value to people applying and this is where we feel we can make the greatest impact with our resources.

Creative New Zealand will publish the people and projects that have been supported by these two funds on Friday 21 June.

 

Key themes and round observations – Creative Fellowship and Creative Impact Round 1

Results are in for the first round of our Creative Fellowship and Creative Impact funds as part of our For the Arts funding programmes implemented in 2024. 

We received a total of 934 applications across the two funds (322 for the Creative Impact Fund and 612 for the Creative Fellowship Fund) with a total of $37,406,001.45 requested. We have offered 94 grants totalling $3,602,594.34 to support artists and practitioners across the three funding pools (General Arts, Ngā toi Māori and Pacific arts).

A wide range of practitioners across various career stages and from all artforms were supported, with the highest artforms represented being Visual arts, Literature and Music. See the list of successful Creative Fellowship and Creative Impact applicants on Friday 21 June

Here we provide key themes and observations of the results for both the Creative Fellowship and Creative Impact funds. The Creative Fellowship fund focused on support for artists, practitioners and collaboratives for a period in which to think, explore, create and develop fresh ideas and approaches to their work. The Creative Impact fund focused on support for artists, practitioners, and collaboratives to make, share and present work that encourages knowledge sharing, enriches audiences and deepens understanding and participation in the arts. 

Key themes and observations:

Supported applications clearly articulated how the funds would be used, and were particularly direct and concise, focusing on practitioner benefit and community impact. These applications also clearly answered the questions and included additional information to support their application, such as evidence of previous work and who was involved in programmes. There was also a strong community focus across the board, especially from those delivering to young people and minority groups. 

Strong applications under the Creative Fellowship Fund tended to:

  • clearly articulate the concepts and ideas they wanted to pursue, defined the scope of research and investigation, identifying where their practice was currently and the direction in which it was headed. 
  • enable recipients at varying career stages to explore activity across a range of new genres.
  • include a clear strategy on how they would share their learnings, and articulated the identified community who would benefit from knowledge sharing as an outcome of the fellowship. 
  • show clear alignment with previous mahi to demonstrate an extension and deepening of artistic practice. 

Strong applications under the Creative Impact Fund tended to:

  • speak well to the presentation of meaningful work and clearly identified benefit to their identified community.
  • strongly demonstrate positive impact on their identified communities, especially traditionally underserved ones. In Literature for example, there were applications that looked to strengthen the literary ecosystem, offer opportunities for young people and contribute to the international visibility of New Zealand literature. 
  • provide rationale on why the project was important for their arts practice now either by demonstrating timeliness of project or alignment to previous mahi that would provide tangible outcomes for their artistic career.

The next round of Creative Fellowship and Creative Impact open on August 5