Creative New Zealand chief executive resigns

Tuesday, 31 October 2023

Creative New Zealand’s chief executive Stephen Wainwright will leave his position mid next year.

Wainwright had been chief executive of the national arts funding agency since August 2006, after first joining it in 1990.

He had been contemplating the decision for about two years, Arts Council chairperson Caren Rangi said. “His leadership and service, over many years and much of it behind the scenes, has steered Creative NZ through the hard times and through the good times too.”

Wainwright said it was “now the right moment for me to move on” and described his role as an “immense privilege”.

“So many things have changed since I first joined Creative NZ, but the commitment of the arts community to its craft is a constant,” he said in a statement. “While the challenges ahead are significant, I’m proud of the team – the work we’ve done and the work we’ll continue to do.”

Last week, Wainwright wrote in a blog that the agency would likely have “materially less” money to invest in the sector from July next year. Reasons cited were the globally tough fiscal environment, drying up of pandemic-related government funding, and signalled changes to the way the NZ Lotteries Grant Board allocated money to the agency.

From next year the grant board would give Creative NZ a set amount of funding instead of a percentage of Lotto profits.

While the board’s review of how it allocated its profits was still ongoing, Creative NZ had been advised that it would likely receive less money than it did now.

It had been told it would receive $49.5m this financial year and the same for 2024/25 - about $5m less than it was given last year. The board said the figure could be even lower if lottery profits were lower than forecast.

Lotteries money makes up two thirds of Creative NZ’s funding. It receives a further $16.69m per year in baseline funding from the government - a figure that hasn’t significantly changed since 2006.

Because of the indicated funding changes, the Arts Council said it would use some of its reserves to cushion the financial blow. However, it didn’t have the reserves to continue doing that. The agency would look “hard” at its own costs, Wainwright wrote in the blog.

Wainwright is paid between $320,000 and $329,000 a year as chief executive.

Earlier this year he was issued a written censure by the Arts Council, which governs the agency, and made apologies to staff over significant failings during an incident at Auckland Airport in January this year.

Amid the city flooding during a heavy storm on January 27, a group of 28 Creative NZ employees and managers had their flights home cancelled and were stranded at the airport overnight.

An independent report investigating the airport events found that senior leaders acted in a hierarchical way and showed a lack of care and respect for employees, which created a rift between them.

There were subsequent calls for an overhaul of the agency’s senior leadership.

Creative NZ had, over the past year, been dealing with an unprecedented deluge of funding applications, a plummeting satisfaction rate, and separate PR crises involving the Shakespeare Globe Centre of NZ and small business network We Are Indigo.

Critics said prospects for an improved culture and situation at the overstretched agency appeared bleak under the incoming government.

National, ACT and NZ First didn’t detail any arts policies in their published manifestos.

Creative NZ would aim to appoint a new chief executive in the second quarter of 2024.