Heather Shotter: Let's keep the creative party going

The Laneway, Pasifika and Auckland Art festivals bring the city alive. Photo / NZME.

Opinion

If we harness the spirit of summer to grow arts and cultural businesses, everyone wins, writes Heather Shotter.

In summer, Auckland comes close to its vision of being the world's most liveable city. Residents leave for holiday destinations; congestion is a distant memory; anyone staying in the region is extremely well catered for with a feast of cultural and sporting events.

The festival season features Laneway, the Pride Festival, Pasifika, the Auckland Philharmonic Season and the now annualised Auckland Arts Festival.

With the ongoing diet of gallery exhibitions, theatre and comedy, Auckland's creative offering rivals any of the world's great international cities.

Visitors can't help but be impressed and inspired. For those who live here, it feels good to be part of a creative city, for almost every day a choice of compelling events beckons to enliven our existence.

Yet a creative city is more than just a healthy dollop of art and culture. We need to grow our creative industries, attracting more people to work in design, publishing, screen production and creative digital content and radio.

If Auckland's annual creative industry employment growth doesn't start to rise, Auckland will fail to meet the council's target of 45,000 employed in the creative sector by 2040.

Internationally, it is well-recognised that the creative and cultural industries contribute significantly to economic growth, urban development and a city's overall attractiveness to residents, visitors and newcomers.

As cities worldwide compete for talent and investment dollars, a thriving creative sector is vital for Auckland. Not only does it attract talent and investment but it also shapes and defines our identity as a city.

Late last year the Committee for Auckland made five key recommendations on how to grow Auckland's creative industries, starting with the need to identify the current scope of creative and cultural activity and a symposium that would bring together all relevant creative and cultural industries and practitioners to garner buy-in.

Its aim is to kickstart the process for developing part two of Auckland's Arts and Culture Strategic Plan with a long-term vision of building the economy and growing stronger communities by attracting innovative skilled people and investment to benefit residents and visitors alike.

The report examined seven large international cities that have positioned their creative and cultural industries as central to their development.

Here are some immediate initiatives taken from those cities that we could share.

1. Celebrate and showcase the richness of indigenous culture, arts and history through cultural facilities and events.

2. Provide signage to cultural venues.

3. Produce an annual booklet celebrating Auckland's achievements in the creative sector and progress towards goals.

4. Develop culture and heritage trails and publish guides to them and to existing walks and cycleways.

5. Ensure there is affordable space for creative workers in and around the city.

6. Establish one office as the point of contact for the creative sector with connections to relevant organisations.

7. Enable further development of existing creative/cultural clusters of talent.

8. Encourage philanthropic funding.

9. Encourage greater development of public transport, public space, green space, pedestrian access and cycle lanes.

10. Establish a forum to connect creative practitioners with international commissioners and to help develop relevant business skills.

To remain globally competitive, we must talk about a broad strategy that will lead us into the future.

The holiday is over. There is no better time to begin.

Heather Shotter is executive director of the Committee for Auckland think-tank.