Simone Anderson is the founding director of the Incubator Creative Hub in Tauranga set up in a redundant museum village site. She established the organisation in 2013 and it now includes arts education, music, pottery, fashion, five art galleries, textiles, whakairo, Ngā Toi, and a community of working studios for 26 artists.
As we say goodbye to a tricky 2023 and slowly back out of a global pandemic reminiscent of a dystopian Netflix blockbuster, New Zealanders find themselves living in a post-election petri dish. What happens next?
As 2023 departs, we reflect on ways we can grow and set intentions for moving forward. As a creative sector, we are an agile bunch, but we can’t just sit back and imagine the country the way we want it to be and expect to magically be there. We might need to adjust our mindsets, continue creative advocacy and lobbying to enact our positive visions. Nothing changes there, but what if we were all pleasantly surprised?
I hope to be blown away to hear that the National-led government has found the previously missing bandwidth to design an ambitious, punchy, and achievable arts policy with a robust strategy that maps and implements a stunning creative future that is front-footing, gutsy and enables us to realise those creative visions.
There has been a lot of concern and uncertainty about where the arts will land so it would be great to prove the predictors wrong, wouldn’t it? I’m always of the mind that change gives rise to opportunities to improve, and negative predictions give an opportunity to lay a challenge to the decision-makers.
The strongest pre-election arts policy promises came from Act, so at the very least we can be optimistic if this policy aligns with its desire to see arts funding “invested more diversely for all inclusively, making a commitment to more equitable funding dispersion across the regions and to demographics that historically have been underrepresented with less bureaucracy and more in education.” Or am I still believing in the big guy who comes down the chimney?
The positive challenge is to Paul Goldsmith, new Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage, to reveal a big, juicy and ambitious arts, culture and heritage policy that knocks the socks off us. Hit the ground running and elevate the importance of arts and culture for everyone; put it back in education from years one upwards (non-negotiable) and sustain the investment, if not increase it, from the grassroots up.
Respond to the campaigns for more arts coverage in media. We have so much to celebrate as a country it should be showcased alongside sport. It’s equally as important and newsworthy, don’t you think? Arts certainly gives compelling stories of our people to be shared.
Set the building blocks to allow arts and culture to flourish and grow across every level, every community so we can see it everywhere in our communities.
Australia adopted a gutsy policy and went straight to work with a plan to revive the arts there. Knowing how competitive we are with our mates across the Tasman, then surely that’s an incentive for our new government to come together to acknowledge the value of arts, culture and creativity and its unnegotiable need to have a status as important as every other portfolio rather than a dumbed down version?
Here’s to a creative New Year resolution. Let’s hope Paul Goldsmith can create this arts and culture policy as well as he can play the piano.
