Te Auaha’s demise, and the retreat of creative education

Saturday, 16 August 2025

As Te Pūkenga prepares to put its purpose-built creative campus in Wellington up for lease, arts students are fearing for their own future ‒ and for the students of tomorrow. By André Chumko.

“There is no creative capital without creatives.”

That precise statement, from Te Auaha stage and screen student Charlie Morse, cuts to the heart of a cultural crisis unfolding in Wellington.

Te Auaha, Whitireia and Weltec’s purpose-built creative campus on Dixon St in central Wellington, is on the brink of closure. For the students who have trained and created here, the loss is personal ‒ and political.

Quoting her friend and fellow practitioner Ashton Church, musical theatre student Lily Tyler Moore said: “This is not only an attack on the arts, but an attack on young people, educators, and those in our communities who rely on our polytechnics. …This is an attack on tertiary education, and our Government’s way of saying they do not care about our communities and our rangatahi (young people).”

The unique school, which opened just seven years ago in 2018, was envisioned as a creative hub bringing together many arts disciplines ‒ screen production, publishing, performing arts and dance ‒ under a single roof. Classes are small so students can build close relationships with tutors, and receive more focused feedback and support.

“One thing that makes Te Auaha truly unique is that so many different creative disciplines are housed under one roof,” says musical theatre student Jiseop Shin. “Students from all these fields share the same space, which naturally encourages collaboration and constant inspiration.”

It offers dance and rehearsal studios, collaborative spaces, a bar, a gallery, a cinema and two black box theatres with professional lighting rigs. In its theatres and hireable spaces outside of class time it hosts a range of live arts, comedy, exhibitions and other performance across the myriad festivals that call Wellington home ‒ and by freelance artists.

But Te Pūkenga, the national network of polytechnics that’s being disestablished, will soon contract a real estate agent to lease the building out after both the Government and Wellington City Council refused to step in to keep the campus open, and after Whitireia and WelTec decided last month to shutter the building in response to financial woes and enrolment numbers it says are unsustainable.

There has been a steep decline in enrolments at Whitireia and WelTec, which started this year in deficit by $12 million. Te Auaha reached only about a third of its capacity of 1000 students.

The closure comes amid a malaise that’s blanketed the city’s arts sector in recent months induced by rising unemployment, cutbacks and restructures including at Wētā FX and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, and the ballooning cost of living.

Students of the soon-to-be-shut Dixon St campus say there was little notice of its closure and a lack of support from its executive team. They’ve raised questions about how much value is really placed on arts education ‒ and whether institutions like Te Auaha were ever truly supported to succeed.

They fear not only about what the closure means for their own studies and careers, but for Wellington and beyond ‒ many of the campus’ graduates populate the country’s stages, festivals, arts organisations and freelance networks.

“Our graduates are the backbone [of] Wellington’s creative industries,” says first-year performing arts student Jayden Pere. “I bet they either came from our programme or know at least one person. … Getting rid of these spaces, you’re just getting rid of someone’s soul.

“I had really felt like I had finally found my place and my people,” said Pere. “Hearing that news made it feel like it was all getting stripped away from me.”

One arts education expert says the closure reflects a broader trend of culture being treated as non-essential within the New Zealand education system, funding being cut for the arts, and decisions being made without meaningful input from those most affected.

While most people learning at Te Auaha this year will get to finish their studies at the Dixon St campus, some whose qualifications extend into 2026 will have to complete their training next year at Whitireia and WelTec’s Petone campus, which has been described as not fit for purpose.

A floor of the Te Auaha building is currently sub-leased to Victoria University of Wellington, which will continue into 2026, said Whitireia and WelTec acting operations lead Andrew Swan.

In the meantime, Te Pūkenga will shortly be engaging a real estate agent to progress the subleasing of Te Auaha. The lease runs until 2038, and decisions about the building’s future use will be made by the Te Pūkenga council, which will consider all options, Swan said.

Right now none of those plans include the city council or Government. While city council staff looked at options for Te Pūkenga to lease some of the space at Te Auaha for its arts programmes, “the reality was that the costs involved far exceeded our budget, so it didn’t proceed”, said Wellington mayor Tory Whanau.

If there were options to keep part of Te Auaha open as an events venue, Whanau said she’d like to see the council consider how it could be supported.

In response to calls for the Government to keep it open, Vocational Education Minister Penny Simmonds said it was her understanding the campus was not financially viable.

It was appropriate for Whitireia and WelTec, “as it is for all polytechnics”, she said, to take action to ensure their overall viability.

Simmonds said the Government was taking a “responsible approach” to re-establishing regionally governed polytechnics in its reform of the vocational education sector.

Despite the Government’s progressing of a national arts strategy which cites nurturing a creative talent pipeline as a key strategic pillar, there has been concern about the general retreat and undermining of the arts within New Zealand’s education system for several years.

Kerryn Palmer, an arts educator of 30 years who this year took a petition to Parliament to reinstate the Creatives in Schools programme, said there was a global pattern emerging in which conservative or authoritarian governments reduced funding and status of the arts, which promote critical thinking and freedom of thought.

Examples worldwide of the trend include Trump’s persistent cuts to arts funding in the United States, or Scott Morrison’s government hiking fees for Australian arts courses in 2020.

Palmer said our Government’s scrapping of NCEA signalled a shift toward standardised testing, prescriptive content and the examination of fact regurgitation. “What sort of society is this going to produce? What’s the long game here?”

As the arts became more inaccessible within the education system, inequality would be exacerbated and diverse learners would be worse off, Palmer said, adding the arts could become a privilege ‒ not a right. “The arts [could] only be for the rich,” she said.

Even though former prime minister Peter Fraser and educationalists Clarence Beeby and Gordon Tovey once ushered in bold education reforms that encouraged creativity, Palmer feared that vision was being dismantled.

The arts were too often treated as non-essential despite their proven role in holistic learning and wellbeing, she said. While countries with the best education outcomes (for instance in Scandinavia) prioritised flexible learning and creativity, New Zealand was moving in the opposite direction, towards a more rigid and centralised system, Palmer said.

That was despite research showing the arts give young people a sense of place and purpose. The arts helped teach students how to live, Palmer said ‒ not just how to make a living.

She believed that education policy today was too focused on outcomes and employability and that there was a lack of any cohesive strategic vision or funding. The country’s arts curriculum still had not been updated ‒ though it is due to be refreshed in 2027.

Arts courses had also been put on the chopping block over the last few years at Victoria University.

“It has been a hard slog for everyone over the last few years,” said Tanea Heke, the tumuaki/leader for Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School based in Newtown, Wellington. “We feel for our colleagues and the tauira (students). The battle is constant.”

Despite that, Toi Whakaari was renewing and extending its programmes and working within a decolonised framework. Its student numbers increased last year ‒ but it was a small institution compared with the polytechnics and universities, Heke said. “We have learnt to be resilient, flexible and open to new opportunities.”

Simmonds said the Government was focused on providing a full range of education opportunities, including in the arts, where there was sufficient student demand and financial sustainability.

The Government was committed to “institutional autonomy” within vocational education in which polytechnics and their councils could make decisions about programmes and campuses to fit the needs of their regions, Simmonds said.

It had established a $20 million fund for each of the next two years, to support provision of vocational education in strategic regions, while longer-term funding options were considered.

“The Government’s focus is on ensuring the overall system is financially sustainable and that students across New Zealand – including those pursuing creative careers – have access to high-quality, viable programmes,” Simmonds said.

But for the students at Te Auaha who have to say goodbye to their school, and for the teachers who will lose their jobs, the comments will be unlikely to provide significant relief.

“This decision feels as if the arts are always disregarded and not valued enough by the people and government in this country,” said Jiya Anand, a third-year performing arts commercial dance student at Te Auaha.

Over recent months the school’s staff and students have come together to speak out, organise protests and use art to raise awareness of the looming closure and its many impacts.

“Regardless of the decisions made, we aren’t going anywhere and we are going to try our best to keep the arts alive in this city,” Anand said. “It’s inspiring to see my peers around me work so hard and the encouragement the staff have given to students. It gives me hope that good things will come.”

Tyler Moore said: “We continue to do what we do best: create and perform art ‒ dancing and singing in the face of oppression.”

The Post also asked students what they’d say if they could speak directly to the decision-makers.

“I would like them to know that their favourite song, favourite painting, favourite movie were all made by someone who was once a young creative,” Morse said.