Creative NZ proposes to cut 23 jobs in ‘sweeping’ restructure
Friday, 12 June 2026
Creative New Zealand is proposing to cut almost a third of its workforce - 23 jobs - as it looks down the barrel of a $1.3 million budget cut and prepares to shift many of its functions to regional partners.
Staff were presented with restructure plans last week. Currently the arts funding agency employs 85 staff across Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin, according to its website.
The Public Service Association described the restructure as “sweeping” and says artists and workers are paying the price “for chronic government underfunding”.
Each year the amount of money Creative NZ has to work with fluctuates depending on lotteries money. For the 2024/5 year it had about $70m to use, made up of $16.69m from the Government (a figure that hasn’t increased in years) and the rest from lotteries.
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Last month the Government announced its budget would be cut by $1.3m over four years.
“This is cultural vandalism. It’s hard proof of the poor choices this Government is making. Arts workers and artists are paying because the Government chose to give landlords and tobacco companies billions in tax cuts instead,” said Fleur Fitzsimons, national secretary for the Public Service Association.
Fitzsimons said Creative NZ had told its staff that it needed to reduce its operating costs “significantly for the future”.
In the past weeks Creative NZ’s chief executive Gretchen La Roche revealed that by 2028 or earlier, up to $40m of the funding it doles out to the sector will instead be distributed by a network of regional partners, yet to be decided.
The move was motivated by years of feedback that its current funding processes were not fit for purpose, overly bureaucratic, and favoured urban centres.
Creative NZ would continue to invest directly in national priorities, international activity, specific art forms, and targeted opportunities, La Roche told The Post last week.
The bulk of the proposed job cuts are arts practice advisers, with that headcount proposed to reduce from 26 to eight people, according to the PSA.
Fitzsimons said: “These are not back-office jobs. These are people with deep expertise and genuine relationships in the sector, who work alongside artists and arts organisations every day. Cutting them is a serious hollowing out of mana, trust and capability.
“With the arts sector in many regions already stretched this loss of expertise could end up undermining the very thing Creative NZ is trying to support - empowering stronger regional connections with local artists and cultural organisations.”
Fitzsimons said bedding in a new system would be challenging with fewer staff. She said workloads would increase.
She noted that Creative NZ had admitted that it does not know if there are enough regional partners capable of taking on the task of doling out funding.
La Roche previously alluded to the agency working to establish such groups, if there were gaps.
Regional partners will be paid - but exactly how much is unknown. La Roche previously said the money would come from Creative NZ’s existing budget, without reducing the amount of funding it pumps into the sector.
Fitzsimons said artists and those who support them deserved better.
“New Zealanders are defined by their culture and their art as Dame Lynda [Topp] said so powerfully. We are all richer for it. The association calls on the Government to hear that message, and act on it,” Fitzsimons said.
Creative NZ would not comment on the proposal, with a spokesperson saying it was “an internal employment matter”.
Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Paul Goldsmith said Crown entities like Creative NZ, and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, have delivered a 2% saving “along with everyone else”.
“We are still investing $1.7 billion into the arts over four years. Our expectation is less is spent on administration, and more goes out the door to artists,” Goldsmith said.