Creative New Zealand releases first report on the diversity of arts funding recipients

06 Dec 2021

Our Diversity Report aims to increase our understanding of issues around equity and access to the arts as we work to ensure the benefits of the arts that we support are available to all New Zealanders.

Today we have released our Diversity Report 2019/20, the first in a planned series of reports looking at the diversity of:

people who access or benefit from Creative New Zealand’s programmes
people who work for Creative New Zealand
people who contribute to decision-making about Creative New Zealand’s investment in the arts.

We plan to build a richer picture of the support we provide by producing this report every two years. This first report provides baseline data, enabling us to analyse trends over time in future reports.

A snapshot of what the report tells us

The report identifies that:

the number of funding applications we receive from New Zealanders (citizens or permanent residents) who identify as Asian is low in proportion to the Asian population in New Zealand
younger applicants (20–29 years) have lower levels of funding success
there is an ongoing disparity in funding, with applicants and organisations based in the main centres receiving more funding than those outside the main centres (often because of where artists and organisations are based)
there are low numbers of Māori-led and Pasifika-led organisations within the Toi Tōtara Haemata and Toi Uru Kahikatea investment programmes.

The report highlights that:

women are more likely to apply for funding, and women and men have equal application success rates
people identifying as Māori made up an average of 16.2 percent of total individual applicants, similar to their proportion of the New Zealand population - and had the second highest success rate, at 42.5 percent
people identifying as Pasifika made up an average of 8.5 percent of total individual applicants, similar to their proportion of the New Zealand population – and had the highest success rate at 43.5 percent

The report also identifies improvements we need to make to the way we collect data, particularly in relation to:

disability and LGBTQIA+ communities, as we don’t currently collect information that lets us track whether these communities are accessing our services or whether the work we support reflects their experiences
gender, to incorporate recent changes proposed by Stats NZ.

Our work to improve diversity in the arts

In response to the report, we’re developing a work programme to improve the accessibility of our services, particularly for those groups we know we aren’t reaching currently or where we know there are barriers to access.

Through this and future reports we are fulfilling our commitment to report on diversity data under our Diversity in the Arts policy (2015). The aim of this policy is to ensure that:

Creative New Zealand’s funding and services are fair, equitable and non-discriminatory and keep pace with rapid demographic changes in New Zealand society.
All New Zealanders, irrespective of age, gender, ethnic affiliations, physical or other disability, sexual orientation or religion, can benefit from the arts Creative New Zealand supports.

We recognise that barriers exist for people accessing our services. We’re committed to reviewing our communications, systems, processes and people to best respond to the arts sector. In 2020, we adopted new methods, including:

increased digital engagement with the arts sector during the COVID-19 lockdown through a series of zui, zono and other Zoom sessions with the sector
an increase in guidance and support provided in video format, including:
development of video content to support people making an application - these include ‘how to’ videos and funding programme ‘snapshots’
development of video content and Zoom sessions to support external peer assessors
development of other Creative New Zealand-created video content (eg New Zealand Sign Language Week video and our recent recruitment video).
Work will be ongoing to improve the accessibility of our systems and processes, with the aim of reducing barriers to accessing services.

We’ll continue to work on making our systems and processes more accessible, and reducing any barriers to people accessing our services.