Artists' frustration grows with Creative NZ over funding

Saturday, 29 April 2023

Steve Thomas, the artistic director of Arts on Tour NZ, says it’s never been easy to be an artist.

Steve Thomas is disappointed.

Friday was the final day of applications for artists who proposed to travel the country and share their craft with Arts on Tour NZ. But due to a lack of funding, the organisation is only able to tour six shows next year instead of its usual 10.

“It's never been easy to be an artist,” Thomas, Arts On Tour’s artistic director, said.

Amid skyrocketing demand and increased competition for arts funding in a post-pandemic world in which art is costly to make but artists’ wages remain among some of the poorest in the country, frustration with funders is growing.

As an example, the public’s satisfaction with services offered by the national arts funding agency Creative New Zealand has plummeted to a new low, according to new data.

Overall satisfaction with the agency’s services dropped to 46% in the last financial year, according to papers given to Arts Minister Carmel Sepuloni’s office in January, released under the Official Information Act.

The target rate was 68%.

Creative NZ has announced a new ring-fenced fund for festivals. Pictured, the Kia Mau Festival has previously received funding from the agency.

“If people aren't happy with Creative NZ through the survey, it’s an indictment on the Government, really. The Government needs to support and nurture artists and the arts,” Thomas said.

But David Pannett, the agency’s senior manager for strategy and engagement, said the survey results were a reflection of the significant demand for, and pressure on, arts funding since Covid-19.

Low pay and the increased cost of living had made a “difficult environment” for Creative NZ to operate in, Pannett said, adding that it could not keep up with the rising demand.

Over the past years it had moved from being able to fund one in three applications to closer to one in four.

Last year it was revealed the agency’s annual satisfaction survey had not topped 68% in the past five years, hovering between 64% and 68% – making the drop to 46% significant.

Creative NZ’s David Pannett says rising demand for arts funding is making things difficult for the agency.

Respondents to the latest survey were “disappointed in; and frustrated with the current arts funding system”, the released papers said.

Meanwhile, after its February arts grants funding round closed less than 24 hours after the 250 application cap was reached, the agency announced it was phasing out its unpopular cap system.

Its new arts grants round that opened on Thursday had the 250 cap replaced with a 450 cap – but even that ended up being met by Friday morning.

Rounds in the future will no longer have caps.

“The cap system hasn’t worked for practitioners and organisations, we want to create changes in our system that really put artists at the centre of how we do things,” said Gretchen La Roche, the agency’s senior manager for arts development services.

Creative NZ’s Gretchen La Roche says the agency’s cap system hasn’t worked.

“This short-term change is helping us take a step to the longer-term change we’re after.”

There had been “a lot of frustration” with the 250 limit, La Roche said, but 450 was the greatest increase it could support with the April round.

It's also been announced that $22 million in reprioritised Covid-19 recovery money given to the agency in February by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage would go towards new, ring-fenced funding rounds for festivals.

Dedicated festival funding would run alongside the agency’s annual arts grants, and were for established festivals which met specific criteria – the key being they must have presented at least one festival in the last five years.

Due to the new funds, established festivals would no longer be able to apply for arts grants.

In December, amid criticism from artists on its systemic issues, Creative NZ announced it would undertake a wide-ranging review of its funds, how they're administered and where its funding comes from with a view to make its services better.

Pannett said the agency was in a “moment of transition”, and new ways of working would be implemented later this year and through 2024. “This is positive for us, and for New Zealand’s artists.”