Top artists given a sporting chance at big-buck awards

By GILBERT WONG arts editor

A computer, a first novel and the chance to finish the publication of a new collection of photography: composer Gillian Whitehead, playwright Briar Grace-Smith and photographer Peter Peryer nominate what they plan to do with the $30,000 cheque each received last week when they were named as three of the first five laureates for the Arts Foundation of New Zealand.

Choreographer and dancer Douglas Wright and writer Elizabeth Knox were the two other creative individuals to earn the title from the new body that seemed to appear from nowhere with large amounts of cash and corporate heavyweights in attendance.

The Arts Foundation is a new beast for the cultural sector, one that will "pick winners" and help those winners to join the stable of New Zealand celebrity. It's a model that owes much to the Sports Foundation, and Sir Ron Scott, sports administrator and arts consumer, is the visible link.

Scott helped to found the Sports Foundation and was instrumental in the genesis of the Arts Foundation, along with Auckland businessman Brian Stevenson, former chairman of Creative New Zealand.

Scott: "I recommended they try to set up a vehicle to attract private money that could be applied to the top of the arts pyramid."

The model resembles the Sports Foundation, which invests in elite athletes who can foot it in a global arena.

Scott says the support and money given to sports stars Susan Devoy, Paul McDonald and Ian Ferguson paid dividends for the profile of New Zealand sport. In its early days, the Sports Foundation gave money to sports that were hardly topics of household conversation, like kayaking, squash and three-day eventing.

So the laureates, five of whom will be named every two years, are partly about raising the profile of the cultural sector in the public mind.

"There are those who criticise the [sports] foundation because it focuses on the top, but it does attract more money from corporates and others, who see that they can identify with the Devoys of this world," says Scott. "While I think Elizabeth Knox and Douglas Wright are well known, the three others are not. It may be that the awards mean that they can become celebrities whose careers the public can follow."

Scott expects criticism: "We are picking winners and a lot of people don't agree with that. I like to think that it's not just for political or nationalistic reasons; it's because any civilised society has an obligation to ensure talent is expressed in whatever area it's in - science, arts or sports."

Scott is on the Arts Foundation board, along with high-profile patrons James Wallace and Jenny Gibbs. They are joined by Sir Paul Reeves, businessman John Todd, company director Roseanne Meo, lawyer Richard Cathie and former head of the NZ Stock Exchange Eion Edgar.

The Governor-General, Sir Michael Hardie Boys, is patron.

Along with the trustees are four governors - playwright Roger Hall, writer Witi Ihimaera, choreographer Mary-Jane O'Reilly and MP Georgina te Heuheu - described as the "heart and soul" of the foundation. The governors elect the trustees and, in turn, the trustees nominate the laureate selection panel of art patron Robin Congreve, theatre director Sunny Amey, newly appointed Creative New Zealand chief executive Elizabeth Kerr and writers Witi Ihimaera and Bill Manhire. The selection panel will change for future awards.

The foundation's first act has opened with enviably full coffers. A lotteries grant of $5 million over five years has been supplemented with corporate funds from Telecom, AMP and Saatchi & Saatchi and Fletcher Challenge. The foundation encourages individual membership at $25,000 a pop, but plans to target what Scott describes as a largely untapped source of money. A foundation survey of the country's lawyers indicates there is a "latent potential" for people with an interest in the arts to leave bequests in their wills.

To date, one family has promised $2 million to the Arts Foundation via bequest, and Scott says the target would be an endowment fund of some $100 million, which would give the foundation a princely income on capital to invest in the arts.

Plans remain hazy, but possibilities are for recognition of "iconic" figures in New Zealand culture - the Frames and Hoteres - though the foundation is leery of sport's Hall of Fame idea; and the acknowledgement of milestones in cultural heritage like Te Maori.

Foundation general manager Margaret Wheeler, an ex-public relations practitioner, says the foundation will steer clear of existing sponsors and individuals who support the arts, though in the small community that is New Zealand, it is hard to see how crossovers can be avoided.

Scott says the foundation aims to stay free of politics and to be unafraid of applying subjectivity in nominating what it supports.

"We're not a granting agency. We'll decide what we think is important and direct our money in that direction. We have to back judgments; the trustees set policy, but how things are done will be set by peers from the arts themselves. I don't know if this is done anywhere else in the world."