04 Mar 2025
Tēnā koutou,
Since stepping into this role last year, I’ve been truly lucky to meet so many artists and organisations face-to-face. Thank you.
Spending time with these insightful, hard-working and ingenious arts leaders – and future leaders - has been a privilege. I am grateful for your insights into the opportunities and challenges ahead. Your aspirations for the future are inspiring, and it’s heartening to see the alignment between Creative New Zealand’s strategic direction and where you want to go.
For the past two years, we’ve been working hard to create meaningful change based on what you’ve told us you needed. We’ve introduced eight new funds and opportunities and are continuing to change how we work with you. More of you now are telling us that this approach is making a positive difference for artists and practitioners – both through informal kōrero and formal surveys. Right now, we are hard at work developing new ways to support arts organisations and groups, based again on your feedback, and with the aim of making funding more accessible to a wider range of organisations. This is careful work, not least as it represents a very significant proportion of all our funding and as we are committed to simplifying and improving all our processes while maintaining robust decision-making processes.
We do know how important clear and timely information is to all of you in your planning, and will keep updating you on what to expect, and when, as we go. We expect to share the full details of the new opportunities in September this year, following the August meeting of our Arts Council.
One thing is clear: opportunities for long-term, multi-year funding for organisations and groups are core to the design of these new programmes.
What’s new
We will be adding new funding layers to the Arts Organisations and Groups round in 2026 to help create a smooth transition between existing and future funding models. This fund will be open to eligible organisations and groups this year from 19 May and all of the relevant information about that round is available online
If you’re an arts organisation or group seeking funding from 2027 onwards, applications will open in early 2026 – but you can start preparing now if you like. A good first step is to check out what we are already asking applicants and why, our decision making criteria, and what we mean by ‘benefit,’ ‘communities,’ and ‘impact’
This month we’re starting a series of webinars to share more detail on these changes, key insights, and answer your most common questions.
Ahead of the webinar we're wanting to hear your questions about this work - so we can answer your queries - please email: koreromai@creativenz.govt.nz with your questions
We’re changing: our journey and what’s next webinar
When: 27 March
Time: 12.30 pm - 1.30pm
Register for this webinar
Ngā mihi,
Claire
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