Government asked to stop ‘unethical’ arts cuts at Victoria University

Thursday, 29 June 2023

Students protest over proposed job cuts at Victoria University of Wellington.

Plans to gut arts courses at Victoria University of Wellington are unconscionable and will irreparably affect the cultural industry, advocates say.

While an 11th-hour reprieve from the Government in the form of new funding could save about a third of the jobs initially slated for axing at the university, there’s still uncertainty over which roles are in the clear.

The university is trying to reduce a $33 million operating deficit amid plummeting enrolment rates.

Composers and theatre practitioners are particularly concerned about their future at the varsity, with a proposal to cut the NZ School of Music’s composition team roughly by half, to just three full-time staff by the end of the year, and another to slash the university’s theatre team from 10 staff down to four full-time equivalents and integrating it into the English programme.

Large student protests have been held opposing the proposed cuts.

“To the Government, I don’t care how you do it … Please step in and stop these insane and unethical cuts,” said Kerryn Palmer, a lecturer in theatre.

Dr James Wenley, another theatre lecturer, said it was deeply concerning how much the university fundamentally misunderstood theatre, and its leaders were de-valuing it through their actions. If the proposed cuts went ahead the theatre programme would “cease to exist as we know it”, he added.

The varsity told staff they would need to focus on critical analysis of theatre, reducing courses involving performance and production elements, but “this completely undermines theatre … as a practice-led discipline”, Wenley said.

Wenley called on the university to halt all cuts.

Local venues for performing arts including BATS and Circa Theatre, and the NZ Fringe Festival which employs many theatre graduates from the university, have thrown their support behind the call.

BATS chief executive Jonty Hendry said Victoria’s world-class, “vital” theatre programme helped shape leaders in the country’s performing arts industry.

The programme provided clear pathways to work opportunities for young emerging artists, and ramifications for the sector would be “dire” if the proposals went ahead, including for mid-to-late career practitioners employed by the university.

Vanessa Stacey is the director of the NZ Fringe Festival.

Gavin Rutherford, the treasurer of Circa Theatre, said without the university’s theatre programme, Wellington would never have become New Zealand’s cultural capital.

“The courses, students and tutors strengthen the Wellington ecosystem by challenging established practitioners and theatres about their process, politics and practices as well as providing invaluable resources through the research projects,” Rutherford said.

Vanessa Stacey, director of the NZ Fringe Festival, added the courses were “immensely valuable”.

John McKay, a veteran sound editor and co-chairperson of the Screen Music and Sound Guild of NZ, said proposed cuts to the composition courses were disastrous. There were not many avenues for quality composition education as it was, he added. “It’s just making it more difficult to enter the profession.”

Other arts-related courses that could see changes at the university include music studies, classical and jazz performance, museum and heritage studies, design technology, classical studies, fashion design, history, library and information design, and media design.