Art Venture is helping artists get their businesses off the ground. Joanna Davies reports.
Jenni Heka fills her days by wearing a number of hats.
"Firstly, I'm the development coordinator for Maori and Pacific playwrights at Playmarket. Then I help organise Banana Boat, a Maori and Pacific playwriting group. And then there's myself as an artist."
She is also raising a family and somehow finds the time to develop a creative business plan through Art Venture, a scheme established by the Arts Regional Trust to help arts organisations.
"I want to start a production company to help produce the work that the writers at Banana Boat are creating. In the long term we'd then like to establish a Pacific and Maori playwrights' festival to showcase this work."
Ms Heka says Art Venture, which will be launched officially next week, is helping her to put her vision on paper.
"I'm getting mentors to help me come up with a business plan, but it's including things like my cultural framework and my values.
"A lot of creative people just want to get doing everything straight away, and they don't always want to do the business side of things like taxes or setting up a charitable trust," she says.
With her are 12 other people from established and emerging arts groups taking part in Art Venture, which takes a year to complete. Its project director, Candy Elsmore of the Arts Regional Trust, says the course is needed to support Auckland's creatives and help their businesses become sustainable.
"For a lot of creative people, setting up businesses doesn't always come naturally to them. What we are doing is working closely with the people because they put so much into their ideas, and helping them to carry on with that," says Ms Elsmore. "When they have finished their business plans, they then get to pitch their ideas to an investment panel.
"The creative sector in Auckland needs to be nurtured, and that is what we are doing here."
Sandi Morrison, the trust's deputy chair, says Art Venture will help to accelerate Auckland's creative sector.
"The trust is intent on incubating and accelerating the development of creative, entrepreneurial people - people who are already making a difference through their work in the creative sector," she says.
"By backing these creative entrepreneurs and what they do, the effect is generative within communities and New Zealand's economy."
For more info, see: www.artsregionaltrust.org.nz or email: info@artsregionaltrust.org.nz
Artists embark on new venture
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