Draft national arts strategy to be released soon

Wednesday, 11 September 2024

The Government will soon release a draft form of its in progress, first-of-its-kind national arts strategy, says Arts Minister Paul Goldsmith.

Making the announcement at an Arts Wellington conference in the capital on Wednesday, Goldsmith said the Government would be seeking artists’ thoughts and reflections on the strategy, which had already been through various iterations, upon its release.

He said the arts made life richer, and the Government recognised it had the power to make things easy or difficult via regulations it enforced.

With the strategy, Goldsmith said the Government hoped to grow New Zealand’s global cultural capital footprint and boost creative export revenue, and encourage greater local engagement with the arts.

“We want to see New Zealand as well known for its creative sector as it is for its lamb chops and its milk … We’re selling milk, we’re selling meat, we’re also selling our film industry, our ideas, our creative sector. I think we need to make that part of our export story and really talk that up,” Goldsmith said.

To achieve that, he said there needed to be a burgeoning pipeline of creative talent, careful investment and a more helpful regulatory environment to make life easier for artists.

Ensuring the next generation and a sustainable ecosystem of creatives started in schools, he said. Goldsmith spoke of his vision of children growing up exposed to a wide variety of arts, then progressing into efficient tertiary arts education programmes and institutions.

Placing value on early arts exposure was “in no ways incompatible” with the Government’s focus on education basics like maths and reading, he said.

Regards investment, citing debt that he blamed on the previous Labour government, Goldsmith said there would not be huge amounts of money available in next year’s Budget for the arts. The Government needed to think about how it could best use the resource it had for the best outcomes, he said, and strategically leverage investment from councils to help support the arts.

Goldsmith said there were many small businesspeople in the arts, and regulatory bureaucracy could make working difficult for them.

He hoped the strategy and other work the Government was pursuing would provide practical, “common sense” solutions to make life easier for those people with regards to things like liquor licensing, parking and compulsory strengthening of quake-prone venues.

After his speech, Goldsmith was challenged by sector leaders on topics including the Government’s dedication to the arts in education given its decision to axe funding for the Creatives in Schools programme; its international commercial objectives for the arts versus its commitment to local communities; Creative NZ’s stagnant budget; and lifting artists’ woefully low wages ($37,000 is the median artist’s income in New Zealand).

“When you are implementing this new arts strategy, will you be talking with artists and educators? Because currently, it seems that the Government is ignoring not only evidence, but also conversations with people who have spent their entire lives … [in] the arts,” said theatre practitioner and arts educator Dr Kerryn Palmer.

Goldsmith said the Government was trying to make New Zealand more prosperous so people would have more discretionary income to spend on the arts, but he would not promise a nirvana in which artists would be richer in a short timeframe.

“There’s some things we can do that will help along the way, but the ultimate answer is to have a much stronger economy.”